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THE 



WESTERN AND EASTERN QUESTIONS 



OF EUROPE. 



/ 



BY ELIHU BURRITT. 

1 1 

REPRINTED FROM THE N. Y. TIMES, WORLD, AND 
HARTFORD COURANT. 



iT. 







^^ 




HARTFORD : 

Hamersly & Co., Publishers. 

1871. 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 



Several intelligent and influential readers having expressed the opinion 
that the reflections herewith presented to the public were worth preserv- 
ing in a more permanent form than the daily papers in which they first 
appeared, the Author submits them in a pamphlet and commends them 
to the thoughtful consideration of both American and English minds in- 
terested in the great questions that have come, or are soon to come, to 
the front before the civilized world. 

New Britain, Conn., March 20, 1871. 



2 



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^ 






Questions of Westerist Europe, 



The Cost of Small Nationalities. 
The hyperbole of popular comparisons or measurements may exagger- 
ate contrasts, but they make them impressive. It is common to hear even 
a poor man say this or that " is worth its weight in gold," sometimes even 
when the this or that is his bright and active boy of fifteen years, and 
weighing a hundred pounds avoirdupois. This simile exaggerates the 
relative value of the two things compared, but the estimate expressed is 
clear and impressive. The same simile reversed may be applied even 
more truthfully to entities in the political world, which have been held at 
a higher price than they are worth to themselves or to mankind. By the 
simile reversed, I mean that there are several small nationalities in 
Europe which cost their weight in gold, though they are worth virtually 
nothing to themselves as political communities, and less than nothing to 
the great family of nations. And this vast cost of their worthless being 
is not borne by themselves, but by outside Powers and peoples. Their 
present pohtical existence is of no more value to their own subjects than 
each of seven kingdoms would be to its subjects if England were again 
resolved into the old Saxon heptarchy, or if France were reparceled into 
as many independent States. 

Let us glance at the status of these small nationalities as they appear 
in the scale of dignity. They are the " unprotected females" in the com- 
munity of European nations. They themselves no more pretend to the 
ability of self-standing and self-defending powers than does a lone and 
defenceless woman sojourning or traveling among rude and stalwart men. 
Her very weakness is her safety. She feels and trusts it as such. She 
believes it will enlist some stout and gallant champion in her defense, 
should she be assaulted by a ruflSan. This weakness may be safety, but 
it is not dignity. And this weakness is not the raison d'etre, but the 
'poumir d'etre, of these small nationalities. And it is a wonder that en- 



2 COST OF SMALL NATIONALITIES. 

lightened patriotism can see in them a reason for independent existence. 
Their subjects are yet as patriotic as those of the Great Powers, and as 
intelh'gent, doubtless. But, with all this patriotism, they must at times 
see and feel how the pigmy stature of their little State dwarfs their own 
political status. What is their opinion, what is their political entity worth, 
when weighed against that of the same number of Englishmen, French, 
Prussians, or Russians ? What is the weight of their Government's opin- 
ion or ability in a great " question " that moves Christendom ? 

Let us glance at the reason and value of these small States in the light 
of the freedom, the liberal institutions, and the general " rights of man," 
which they procure and maintain for their subjects or citizens. Take 
Ireland, for example. Could any form of independent nationality, under 
a constitutional monarchy, or a republic, raise an Irishman one political 
inch above an Englishman on the sister island, or in any quality or enjoy- 
ment of freedom to think, speak, move, or act in " the pursuit of happi- 
ness?" Would the "repeal of the Union," or a republic, cheapen a single 
acre of land, or even transfer one to a new owner without pay to some- 
body ? Ireland elects and sends to the Imperial Parliament more repre- 
sentatives pro rata of her population than she would be allowed to send 
to Washington were she united to the American Republic. If independ- 
ent, would she send more or better representatives to Dublin ? If she 
could and did, could and would they be more unanimous at Dublin than 
in London, or make better laws for the best good of her people than they 
could if equally honest and united in the British Parliament? In a word, 
could any form of national independence give an Irishman in Ireland a 
single possibility of freedom in "the pursuit of happiness" which he can- 
not enjoy or reach, as a subject of the United Kingdom, on the same foot- 
ing as an Englishman in England ? 

We might go around the whole circle of would-be independent nation- 
alities, and apply the same questions to them. Crossing the diameter of 
this circle, what, may we ask, can the subjects of the two Danubian Prin- 
cipalities be, enjoy, or hope more than they could if they were part and 
parcel of the Austrian Empire ? What possibilities of progress, freedom, 
political dignity and material prosperity can the motley populations of 
European Turkey attain under the Mohammedan rule of Constantinople, 
which they could not possess under the Russian sceptre at St. Petersburg ? 
What liberties do the few millions of Sweden enjoy, or pretend to, which 
the population of Denmark do not possess and use ? What is the raison 
d'etre'? Wherein does it pay, in political privilege or status, to keep up 
two independent nationalities for Spain and Portugal ? To use a term 



COST OF SMALL NATIONALITIES. 3 

more familiar to the American than perhaps to any other community, these 
old sovereignties do not pay, in dignity, strength, and freedom, for what 
they expend themselves to keep up their independent existence. 

But, in some cases at least, where one of these small nationalities has 
paid out of its own pocket a farthing for its own deceptive and fruitless 
independence, the " Great Powers " around it have paid a pound sterling 
as their annuity on this life assurance policy. If any thoughtful reader 
thinks this an aggravated estimate, let him just glance at the causes of all 
the wars in Europe for the last two hundred years, at the " wars of suc- 
cession," or wars to maintain a " balance of power." Let him analyze 
the composition of the English national debt, and see how much the na- 
tionality of Spain has cost the English people, and how they have been 
paid in ingratitude and indignity for their money and their blood. Why, 
a few days ago the English Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to a 
question in the House of Commons, stated that England's bill of costs in 
the Crimean War was £80,000,000 in money, not counting the blood she 
poured out like water in the struggle. Now $400,000,000, besides 
the sacrifice of precious life, was a pretty large sum to sweat out of the 
incomes and industries of the English people in less than two years. It 
was a pretty large sum for them to pay for the sham autonomy of two 
Danubian provinces, or even for the existence of Turkey itself as an inde- 
pendent nationality. But this sum is small compared with the cost of 
Belgium to England. It involved a great expense to France and other 
outside nations to rive that small country from Holland, one of the freest 
and most solidly prosperous nations in Europe ; one of the first maritime 
countries in the world, of which Belgium formed a part, and from which 
she could have derived as much advantage as any section of the Nether- 
lands. Well, from the time this new nationality was first set upon its feet, 
its " protection " has cost England more than it has Belgium itself. Al- 
though three or four other Great Powers signed the guarantee papers 
with her, she knows that not one of them attached more obligation to the 
compact than to the old vitiated Treaty of Vienna ; that not one of them 
feels bound to fight for Belgium, unless its own individual interests were 
involved. So England has virtually assumed the whole obligation and 
cost of defending that small nationality. From the date of the treaty, 1839, 
she has apprehended an attack upon the independence of her protege, and 
she has felt bound to prepare to resist such an attack. For thirty years 
or more, the invasion of Belgium has been one of the front-rank probabili- 
ties for which she has provided in her armed peace establishments. It is 
a moderate estimate that these prepai-ations for the defense of Belgium 



4 THE BALANCE-OF-POWER REGIME. 

have cost England £5,000,000 a year for the last thirty years. She has 
just now voted £2,000,000, as an extra appropriation, to provide against 
the increased peril of the hour. But this sum is only a small instalment 
of the amount involved in her military armaments in behalf of Belgium. 
If no outside Power touches that little Kingdom with its little finger, this 
new danger will cost England £20,000,000. But think of what would 
come if either Prussia or France should attack Belgium. England has 
just released all the other parties that signed with her the Belgian guar- 
antee ; she has engaged, single-handed, to enter into this tremendous 
struggle, and fight for France or against France for the independence of 
Belgium. Just think for one moment of the illimitable peril of blood and 
treasure involved in this obligation, whichever horn of the dilemma Eng- 
land shall be obligated to take. Suppose, at some desperate crisis of this 
conflict, Prussia should violate the territory of Belgium, and France should 
call upon England to fulfill the letter of her bond, and send her iron-clad 
fleet to the Baltic to shell the Prussian ports, bombard Berlin, and depose 
and capture Victoria's eldest daughter, and destroy Potsdam and all the 
royal palaces. Or pursue the alternative, and suppose that England 
should oblige herself, by this new bond, to join Prussia in the complete 
subjugation of France. In either case, when all that Belgium shall have 
cost England, from 1839 to the end of the chapter, shall have been com- 
puted, will not the total illustrate the cost of small nationalities ? 



The Balance-of-Power Regime. 
In these weeks of centuries for days, Christendom is making history very 
fast. Changes of public opinion are worthy of being put in the front rank 
with the events which this history is to record. Does the general appre- 
ciation of these momentous events indicate a change of public opinion in 
refei-ence to the policy in which they originated ? The American mind 
never had much occasion to be exercised in regard to the balance-of-power 
regime on this Continent. Virtually, as a nation, we have no neighbors, 
in the European sense, or none to fear or oppose our growth and expan- 
sion. "We would not admit for a moment that the neighbors we have on 
the north and south have any reason to fear insult or injury from us in 
consequence of this rapid and immense growth of our national territory 
and power. We believe, and would have them believe, that Canada and 
Mexico are just as safe from any violation of their rights on our part as 



THE BALANCE-OF-POWER REGIME. 5 

they were when we did not number ten millions. "We have this full faith 
in ourselves in regard to our disposition and intentions toward our weaker 
neighbors. We will not now stop to inquire if we should have the like 
faith in them if the case were reversed, and ihey were growing at our rate 
and we at theirs. 

One thing is quite evident : the American mind clearly sympathizes with 
Prussia in this tremendous struggle with France, and seems to throw upon 
the French the onus or responsibility of the war. It is true that, perhaps, 
thi'ee out of every four Americans charge Louis Napoleon with being 
the cause of the war, though nothing is more certain than that his fiercest 
opponents were the most eager to rush into it, and he the most reluctant 
to cast his all upon the temble hazard of the sword. The whole English 
nation leans to Prussia as manifestly as the American does. Now, a com- 
mon and equal suspicion or dislike of the French Emperor, doubtless has 
a good deal to do with this bias in both cases. But, I am confident that 
no fair-minded and intelligent American or Englishman, on second thought, 
would believe that if Napoleon had never been born, or if France had 
been a republic since 1848, this war would have been avoided. To be- 
lieve that it would have been avoided, one must believe that the domina- 
tion of the old balance-of-power regime over the sentiment and policy of 
nations has been broken. Does the sentiment of America, England, and 
of other countries that side with Prussia, indicate this belief? Does it 
show the progress of a great change in public opinion in regard to the 
free growth and expansion of nations ? that one has no cause to fear the 
simjjle increase of territory, population, and power on the part of its neigh- 
bor ? If this new and more hopeful public opinion is beginning to mani- 
fest itself in this way, is it inspired by a sentiment like our American faith 
in our own fair and honorable mind and intent toward our neighbors ? 
Does it proceed from a new or increasing confidence in the disposition 
and policy of great and growing Powers ? To bring it to a most practical 
actuality, is it the sentiment of outside nations that France had no cause 
of fear in the growth and power of Prussia, though it absorbed into itself 
and wielded the whole German-speaking empire on the Continent ? 

For one, I should be rejoiced to believe that the public sentiment of 
the great majority of Christian nations had reached this " consummation 
so devoutly to be wished." What a change such a sentiment must bring 
into the relationships and policies of the Great Powers in time to come ! 
How different from • the sentiment of those Powers which led to the Cri- 
mean war ! Then Russia crossed the Pruth and threatened to hold two 
or three Danubian principalities as hostages or guarantees for the better 



6 



THE BALANCE-OF-POWEU REGIME. 



treatment on the part of Turkey of her Christian subjects, or for the better 
observance of some of her treaty stipuhitions in their behalf. The balance- 
of-power regime trembled with angry emotion at this covert or fancied 
attack upon its domination. England, France, Italy, and Turkey arose 
in arms to resist and avenge it. Not one iota of faith was given to the 
protestations of Russia that she did not intend to add an acre to her ter- 
ritory by her movement against Turkey. No ; she was not to be trusted 
for a moment. If let alone, she would hold the Danubian Provinces in 
permanent possession after Turkey had conceded her claims. Then she 
would go on from step to step until she had conquered and annexed the 
whole of European Turkey. Then, Avith this additional force, she would 
set out on her march against Western Europe. The vanquished Turks 
would give her power to tread down Austria and Prussia, and, gathering 
force from extinguished nationalities, she would overpower France and 
then make England the last victim of her victories. 

Such apparently was the sentiment of England, France, and Italy in 
regard to Russia ; and the American mind seemed to share or sanction it 
to some extent. What a great and hopeful change ! No European 
Power has ever expanded its territory and dominion so rapidly as Prussia 
during the last ten years. She has subdued or annexed to herself a full 
half dozen Belgiums in population and territory. She went to war with 
Austria, and drove her out of the door of Germany for a cause which not 
one well-read American in a hundred can describe or remember. Within 
the last decade she has made herself from a second-rate Power to the first 
in Europe in every element of strength. But she is a highly-educated 
and honorable nation, and the world may repose confidence in her good 
intentions. She would be as unlikely to injure or insult a neighboring 
nation, in consequence of her increased power, as the United States would 
be in regard to our weaker neighbors. France ought to have shared this 
feeling of confidence, and not to have looked upon the growth of this great 
Power, abutting upon the whole line of her territory, either with hostility 
or alarm. 

To my mind this change of public opinion in regard to the growth of 
nations, if it is real and permanent, is one of the most hopeful signs for 
the time present and to come. If it is really a radical change of opinion 
it must abolish wars, and, what are almost worse, the half-crushing armed 
peace establishments of Christendom ; for they belong to the balance-of- 
power policy. If, for instance, the French Government should some day 
become so liberal, so like the Belgian, that the Belgian people should vote 
unanimously to become part and parcel of France in order to avoid the 



ENGLAND'S POSITION AND DUTY. 7 

expense of an independent nationality, and to feel themselves equal sub- 
jects of a great Empire, it would be comforting to believe that Great 
Britain vi'ould not oppose it or fear the annexation or union, but would 
believe in the honorable intentions of the French nation thus augmented, 
and consequently would not apprehend that they would make Antwerp 
another Cherbourg as a menace to so confiding a neighbor. 



England's Position and Duty from an Outside Stand-Point- 
At this remarkable crisis in the history of Europe, the position and 
duty of England are earnestly discussed by the most influential organs of 
public opinion at home and abroad. English, American, German, French, 
and many other writers and speakers of different countries and languages, 
are laboring to demonstrate what England should do or not do at this 
juncture. I therefore venture with deference to put forth a few thoughts 
on this exciting question from a stand-point which, I regret to notice, so 
few American journalists and public men seem disposed to adopt. 

"Blood is thicker than water," even though the water may be stirred 
from the bottom by some temporary excitement. And the common blood 
of our two great nations will never grow thinner than it is now. We have 
a long march side by side before us ; and we must feel more interest in 
the right wing of the grand army than any outside nation can do. If, in- 
stead of keeping step with us, it turns aside to fight with wind-mills, or 
imaginary enemies, we must lose some of the great victories for mankind 
which we might win and share together. And to a man of plain, common 
sense, most of the arguments that are now being pressed upon England 
seem calculated to drag her out and far from the high road to these victo- 
ries. For it is the most prominent feature of these arguments that they 
are based upon an old traditional sentiment as Avell as policy of the Eng- 
lish government and people. They insist that, although England may 
quite transform her traditional home policy, her old traditional sentiment 
and attitude toward foreign countries must be maintained for the sake of 
consistency, if from no other motive ; that, though it is safe and right to 
enfranchise and trust what so recently were regarded as dangerous classes 
at home, it is unsafe to trust to the honor and good faith of neighboring 
nations, or even to relax the traditional suspicion of their evil intentions. 
Now this traditional foreign policy is founded in an old and sedulously 
stimulated sentiment of suspicion, which alone can sustain it. But it was 
an old sentiment that inspired and upheld that home policy which the 



g ENGLAND'S POSITION AND DUTY. 

English people have condemned and transformed. And that foreign policy 
which has involved England in such sacrifices of blood and treasure must 
drag her into still bloodier wars if the sentiment that sustains it is not 
changed. Why should it outlive the public feeling and opinion which she 
has changed on so many other questions? To an American, of average 
intelligence and sincere respect and good will for the mother country, it is 
a wonder that she can still burden her heart and soul with such suspicions 
of other governments and peoples; that she can feel her place and safety 
so endangered by the mere growth of a neighboring nation in territory 
and population. 

I would appeal to a history as fresh and vivid as the events of yester- 
day. Did not the whole English nation, as loudly as ours, condemn such 
a suspicion on the part of France towards Prussia? Did they not believe 
and say as strongly as we did, that France had no reason to fear the erec- 
tion and consolidation of thi<5 new and vast German power abutting upon 
her territory for its whole length, and almost flanking it at both ends? 
Why did they, as well as we, believe and say this ? Neither they nor we 
wished France to expose herself to any danger, to any insult or incivility 
from her new and powerful neighbor. This was the reason. We had the 
fullest confidence in the honorable disposition and good faith of Prussia. 
If all the German states, including Austria, had united with her in one 
consolidated empire, with Frederick William on the throne, and Bismarck 
on his right and Moltke on his left hand, would not England as well as 
America have said to France, "You have nothing to fear; these Germans 
are a peace-loving, honorable race. Don't go and increase your army on 
their account; don't yie'd to any suspicion of their good faith and intent 
toward you as a neighbor ?" 

Well, now, is not Belgium as much French in language, religion, prox- 
imity, and other affinities, as Hanover was Prussian? Suppose all these 
affinities, in addition to other more social forces, should work out the vol- 
untary union of France and Belgium in one consolidated, one-hearted na- 
tionality. Would it not be our duty, and the first and best we owed Eng- 
land, to say to her as a nation what she and we said to France: "Don't 
be uneasy about this union. France and Belgium have only done what 
you and Scotland did under the first James, and perhaps in the same way. 
This union is no more dangerous to you than was the act to France that 
made your two kingdoms one. You believed, as fully as we, in the good 
faith and peaceable disposition of the Germans towards the French. Let 
us both believe the same of the French toward you. Why, Prussia has 
united lo herself nearly half a dozen Belgiums in territory and population- 



ENGLAND'S POSITION AND DUTY 9 

Don't fear French invasion or French insuU, because they have added 
only four or five millions to their census. Trust their honor and good 
faith as neighbors. They have as much to gain and hope for from peace 
and unity with you as you have with them. Believe that what you would 
not do unto them they would not do unto you. This faith will be worth 
more to you than all the iron-clads you could put on the ocean." 

Every American who wishes England well must feel anxious lest she 
should yield at this juncture to the loud advocates of her old traditional 
policy founded in this suspicion of her neighbors. All who feel that the 
whole human family has a large stake in her well being, must regard with 
concern the position which she has assumed and resumed in regard to both 
Belgium and Turkey. An observing, friendly outsider mighk well wonder 
if the English people are really aware of what they have taken upon 
themselves by assuming these obligations towards each of those countries. 
We might well ask them to consider for a moment what is involved in 
their renewed obligation to Belgium, and what would result from it in a 
very probable contingency. The leading journalists and statesmen of 
England do not mince matters when speaking of her traditional policy 
toward that State, and the main reason for it. That policy will never al- 
low the union of Belgium with France, because it would endanger the 
safety of England to allow the French to possess Antwerp, which they 
could make another Cherbourg. Rather than permit such a union, they 
would go to war with France. Just think what this determination involves. 
Is it not clear to every intelligent mind that, if the union did create such 
a danger, the more spontaneous and unanimous the union the more immi- 
nent the peril, according to the old logic of suspicion? For if the union 
were effected by force or fraud, the Belgians would be hostile to the 
French, and be a source of weakness instead of strength. In that case 
Antwerp would not be so dangerous to England as it could be if the two 
populations were heartily united in will, interest, and policy. Then would 
not the advocates of the old balance-of-power theory make a strong case, 
and argue that the fairer the means and motives to the union, the greater 
the danger to England? They might, according to their logic, go further 
still in case that Belgium should be the first to make the advance, and 
charge her with being the most criminal party to the dangerous union, and 
to merit the first and severest punishment from England. 

This is the complexion to which this old policy of suspicion must come 
at last. If maintained to the bitter end of its argument, it engages to 
crush a people in the clearest, fairest exercise of its inherent and inalien- 
able right to change its own nationality. It imposes the burden, the weak- 
2 



2Q COMPARATIVE DUTIES AND RELATIONS TO FRANCE. 

ness and insignificance of a protected independence upon a State that is 
unable to stand upon its feet without outside help. If its people prefer 
such a condition, well and good; if not, equally well. Their will, interest 
and right are not to be weighed against other great interests in the bal- 
ance-of-power scales. Now could any thing be more repulsive to the 
great masses of the English people than this act of forcible compression 
upon a small but independent State? But this old traditional balance-of- 
power policy inevitably involves and contemplates such an act of violence 
and wrong. And the living, breathing, speaking soul of this policy is a 
suspicion of the bad faith and evil intentions of neighboring nations. To 
change, to transform this costly and perilous sentiment, would be the best 
service the true friends of England could render to her, or to the peace of 
the world. 



Comparative Duties and Relations to France. 

A great number of reading and thinking men must notice the fact that 
many of our leading journals of both political parties denounce the policy 
and attitude of England towards France. They seem to taunt her with 
cowardice and meanness ; with love of money and love of life ; with fear 
to impose upon her people the sacrifice of blood and treasure which a war 
for the rescue of her neighbor would involve. In applying to her these 
epithets, they never seem to recognize any corresponding relations and 
duties of the United States to France. This omission seems hardly fiiir 
to either of the parties. Indeed, it implies a virtue on our part as a 
nation which we can hardly claim. 

What, then, ought England to do for France that she has not done from 
the beginning of this fearful struggle to the present moment ? Could 
she have done anything more than she did do to prevent the war ? Did 
the United States, or any other power than England, even attempt to do 
anything to prevent it ? Since the commencement of the war to the 
present moment, have the United States, or any power than England, even 
attempted to end it, a propria motu, by any actual effort ? Has any negotia- 
tion between Prussia and France for an armistice, or any preliminary step 
toward peace, been effected by or through any other power than Eng- 
land ? It is true that General Burnside, as a mere private individual, has 
labored generously to induce a conference between the two belligerents 
that might lead to peace. But, on the other hand, the almost premier 



COMPARATIVE DUTIES AND RELATIONS TO FRANCE. jj 

general of the United States and in their pay and duty, has been fol- 
lowing the German army almost as an actual member of its royal staff, 
receiving its honors and hospitalities, and imparting to it the vphole value 
of his experience in our civil war. 

What, then, should England do as a former ally and near neighbor to 
France ? Was she at fault because, like us, she could not approve of the 
cause of the war ? With all her duty to France as an ally and friendly 
neighbor, ought she to have said to her, even by implication : " Go on ; 
pitch into Prussia, with whatever cause you avow or entertain, and if you 
are worsted we will step in and rescue you from the humiliation you in- 
tended to inflict upon her?" Does not the vigorous, decisive policy which 
so many of our influential journals and public men urge upon England, 
mean all this ? Certainly they cannot believe that any mere threat on 
her part could affect Prussia, or check her design or progress, unless 
backed by an armed force that could and would arrest her. Such a threat 
would do no more to this end than the noisy gongs the Chinese beat to 
frighten the British army in their first battle with them. What force, 
then, could England alone bring into the field that would be of any account 
to thwart or check the German armies ? Remember what took place in 
the Crimean war ; how it required nearly all the available ships of western 
Europe, and many of North America, to convey 100,000 English and 
French troops, with their armaments, to Sebastopol. Suppose England 
should find ships enough to land in France every soldier in her regular 
army, with all their cavalry, cannon, and other munitions of war. Sup- 
pose she could muster a force even of 100,000 men on French soil, what 
would they be and do, even with the fortress of Metz or Sedan to back 
them, before 600,000 Germans, who would face them with their terrible 
artillery ? 

But let us be as liberal as its sanguine friends would wish as to the 
possibilities of such an intervention. Let us suppose that England could 
land 100,000 men in France ; that such an array, with the French forces, 
would beat back the Germans from Paris, and even from the last acre of 
French territory ; that she could impose an ultimatum upon Germany, 
or say : " Thus far shalt thou come, and no further." Would not the 
question then arise : " How far shall she come, and no further ? " Shall 
she have any French territory ? " Not an acre ! " cries France, from 
peasant to prince. " We intended to have a good slice of her's, but not a 
morsel of ours shall fall into her hands." Shall she have any money to 
pay her back part of what she has spent in the war ? " Not a single 
franc ! " cries French patriotism, wherever it breathes. " With the help 



12 COMPABATIVE DUTIES AND RELATIONS TO FRANCE. 

of England we have driven the last German regiment from our soil, and 
are we going to pay them for destroying our armies and burning our cities 
and villages? A thousand times, no /" 

When England has heard this no reverberating through the whole area 
of France, what kind of i/es Avould she be able to force upon the lips of 
the French Government and people ? Let us imagine her predicament 
and language : " But you must pay Prussia something, in land or money, 
to reimburse her for all her blood and treasure spent in this war, which, 
you know, you forced upon her. We did not come over here to fight for 
you, merely or partly to save your money, or even all your land, but to 
save you from having all the breath beaten out of your body as a nation ; 
to save your national existence from destruction ; to set you on your feet 
again, to walk with us as a coequal power. We did not come here to bar 
the payment of your just debts to Prussia, which you rushed into against 
our urgent advice and remonstrance." 

Now let us hear France : " Call you this backing your friends ? Why, 
you are confederate with Prussia in our humiliation and dismemberment. 
After all this show of help and friendship ; after having aided us to drive 
her forces out of France, you talk of giving her the territory which she 
seized but could not hold ! You talk about our paying her costs in this 
war as well as our own ! Albion perfide! and all this after the mag- 
nificent triumph you have helped us to achieve ! " 

Now if the ai-med intervention of England could do all that its friends 
could conceive or wish, in what way could this most hate-breeding cause 
and question between her and France be averted ? The friends of this 
" vigorous policy " seem to make it England's duty alone to interfei-e in 
behalf of France ; and reproach her for considering money or blood in 
face of her obligations fo her neighbor. In discussing her means for war, 
they intimate that she has plenty of money to hire soldiers abroad, if she 
cannot raise them at home. Let us grant this ; but I would put it to 
every intelligent and patriotic American between the two oceans : Does 
England owe more to France than we do, as an ally, as a friend, a helper 
in the infancy of our nation, when at the point of being strangled in its 
cradle ? Do we, can we pay our debt to her by these cheap and windy 
expressions of platform sympathy and type-talk about " old associations," 
and all that sort of thing? Littlest and meanest of all, can we pay 
what we owe her in the brassy and costless coin of reproach dashed into 
the face of England for her inability or hesitation to pay our debt as well 
as her own to her neighbor in this time of need ? I would not lower 
the dignity and gravity of this argument by an illustration which might 



COMPARATIVE DUTIES AND RELATIONS TO TRANCE. 13 

excite a smile for its rusticity ; but when considering this cheap process 
of asking such a creditor as France to " to take the will for the deed," I 
am reminded of the saying of a poor but friendly man to his neighbor : — 
" O Sam ; I am so glad to see you ! I would give you some cider, if I had 
any, and good cider too." To a man with parched lips this cheap though 
sincere will must give increased thirst. 

Suppose, then, that the friends of this vigorous policy should feel the 
pulse of the American government and people on the question, not only 
of England's duty but of our own to France. Suppose they address 
an appeal to Congress to show more magnanimity and higher sense of ob- 
ligation to her ; to set aside all the love of money, life, and comfort which 
England has evinced, and send over to the rescue of France our whole 
navy and an army of 50,000 men under General Sherman. Perhaps 
with the help of the British Provinces we might muster ships enough to 
convey such a force across the ocean ; especially if England would furnish 
cannon, horses, forage, and other munitions of war at a fair price, or with- 
out price. With such cooperation, she might shake oflF her ''"apathy" 
toward her distressed ally and furnish an army of 100,000 to march side 
by «ide with the American contingent. Or if they think this would be im- 
practicable, let them urge the argument they press upon England ; or say 
that we, too, have plenty of money ; and if we cannot send an army across 
the ocean, we can hire and officer one there, and save Paris and France 
itself from subjugation. Surely the high-minded, generous American 
people would not haggle or hesitate over only a thousand millions of dol- 
lars, more or less, in behalf of a country to which we owe all that one 
nation can owe to another. England would have to expend that sum if 
she went to the help of France. Surely we owe France as much as she, 
and can afford to pay as much in money or blood, or both. Let the friends 
of armed intervention, who have such clear and brave perceptions of Eng- 
land's duty to undertake it alone, put fairly and squarely before the gov- 
ernment and people of the United States the proposition to send to the 
succor of France such an American contingent in men or money as we 
have suggested. Let them ask honestly, earnestly, and in good faith, and 
without delay, and see what answer they will receive. 



24 A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS. 

A New Way to Pay Old Debts. 

I am no politician, and I i-ead the leading organs of public opinion with 
equal interest. However they differ on subjects of home and foreign 
policy, I have been struck with a common feature of their views in re- 
gard to England's relation and duty to France at this crisis of the struggle 
between that country and Germany. In the first place, with all the history 
of our national existence before them, they seem to ignore our debt to 
France, or to regard it as a mere trifle compared with what England owes 
that distressed neighbor, who wrested from her the Thirteen American 
Colonies perhaps twenty or thirty years before they could have won their 
independence by their own unaided efforts. Or if they recognize any 
obligation on our part to France, they seem to imply that it may be fully 
liquidated by the cheap currency of a wordy sympathy, but that England 
must be held to pay her debt in the hard cash of blood and her people's 
earnings to save her neighbor's money or landed estate. 

Then there are other aspects of the arguments urged by them which they 
can hardly consider. They seem to make our geographical position a 
moral virtue, or a kind of distinctive institution of our Republican govern- 
ment. I wonder if they ever think of the inference that dispassionate 
minds draw from this argument : that ''distance lends enchantment" and 
solution, too, to our national obligation to France ; that nature pays our 
debt to her by interposing the ocean between her shore and ours ; that 
she is too far off to be helped by our navy and army ; that our war-ships 
have too much business in antipodean seas to be spared for the aid of 
France, or to " pay for a dead horse." Surely those who press these ar- 
guments cannot believe that the $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 worth of 
arms shipped by our manufacturers or jobbers are an instalment of the 
debt we owe her ; for every one of them costs her the full factory price, 
if no more. 

There is another inference, very singular and very salient, that strikes 
one in the very front of these arguments. It is this : that though we are 
bound to keep out of or withdraw from all entangling alliances of debt to a 
foreign nation, England has no right to do the same ; no right to be like 
us, to adopt our home and foreign policy ; no right even to approximate 
to us in her institutions, to reduce her standing army to the standard of 
ours, though ours has a continent to defend while hers has only a small 
island, on which all the Powers of the continent could not land 100,000 
men if they should unite in the attempt. No — so the argument runs — 
she must raise and sustain a great army that shall cope with the hosts of 



A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS. 15 

any continental Power, and be the first and foremost in any great war in 
Europe, while we stand by and boast that we are the first and foremost in 
peace by virtue of our genius as a republic. 

But the most remarkable and prominent feature of all these arguments 
is the direct suggestion of a new way to pay old debts, or to " kill two 
birds with one stone." Perhaps it is fair and right to say that the public 
journals and speakers that taunt England with love of money and love of 
human life as the reason of her hesitation to fight for France, do not in 
the same article or speech suggest how she could be forced to pay her 
debts all round. But in collateral arguments they do this very distinctly. 
In the first place, according to their logic, in fighting for France, England 
would not only pay her own debt but ours, too, to her neighbor and former 
ally. Although, of course, she never did and never can owe France as 
much as we do, yet, as she is the nearest debtor, she ought to pay what 
she owes and we, too, cost what it might. Now, if we could drive her 
into such a war, it would be a cheap as well as new way to pay an old debt, 
which we have acknowledged time and again. If we could force her into 
this armed intervention by dint of taunts and fiings at her selfish love of 
peace, we should do as much for France as if we ourselves sent a fleet 
and 50,000 men to her aid. Then should we not pay our debt to France 
handsomely ? 

But another consideration seems to peer over all others in favor of this 
economy. It even improves upon the proverb of " killing two birds with 
one stone." It proposes to kill three or four at least. We shall not only 
compel England to pay what we owe France, but to pay us in full tale 
for all the damage her Alabamas did us. Nothing can be more direct 
and outspoken than the intimation that England would have to settle our 
claims more nearly on our own terms, even if she drew her sword for 
France under the pressure of American sentiment and influence. Our 
leading journals, of both political parties, reproduce this consideration al- 
most daily. Near the conclusion of this letter, I glanced at the most 
widely circulated and influential Republican journal in America, and read 
these lines, leading a paragraph on the subject: "The present time of 
embarrassment in England appears a very good opportunity for America 
to settle her old claims. England betrays much anxiety to arrange with 
us before plunging into greater complications in the East." The first and 
foremost of these complications is the intervention in behalf of France, to 
which a combined force of English and American opinion is urging her. 
The working-men of England, who are pressing her in this direction, in 
their address to their brethren in the United States, are afraid we shall 



15 THE CONQUERING FRANCE OF THE FUTURE. 

improve this " very good opportunity" to recover our bill of damages 
from her while she is paying our debt to France. Speaking of her hesi- 
tation to engage in such a war, they say : " To excuse this culpable inac- 
tion on the part of English statesmen, it is said that they are hampered by 
the fear that America will take advantage of England's position, if she 
went to war, and endeavor to enforce disputed claims connected with your 
late unhappy civil strife." 

Thus this new way of paying old debts seems to be understood both at 
home and abroad as the direction our policy is to take in regard to this 
great question. It is a very adroit and ingenious policy. It kills three 
birds at least with one stone. What an attractive scope and motive for 
grandiloquent sympathy with France ! What a heroic role for a great 
and generous nation owing what we do to her ! If we can press England 
into a war for her, while she is clutching with the foe we will pounce 
upon her back with a score of American Alabamas. She will fear this 
act of heroic hostility on our part and postpone the intervention we are 
trying to force her into until she has paid us what we demand. Under 
such a pressure of embarrassments she will not haggle over the amount. 
We shall get our pay in full from her, and we shall pay our debt to France 
in full in the money and blood of England. The animus, aim, and end of 
this economy bespeak a shrewd policy ; but, on the whole, I wonder if the 
American nation would be proud of its adoption and success. 



The Conquering France of the Future, and the "Way to Her 

"Victories. 

At this moment of physical disaster to France, when the sympathies of 
the outside world, in both hemispheres, are flowing in upon her in a flood 
of gosd-will, the question as to her future must come to every thoughtful 
mind susceptible of a friendly interest in her well-being. No nation in 
the history of the world ever drank of such a bitter cup of experience in 
one-half year as that now pressed upon her lips. The peoples that stand 
by can almost taste, if not share the draught. Even the new and power- 
ful empire that has forced it upon her knows and feels how bitter it is. 
As she puts it to her lips she turns her despairing eyes from one bystand- 
ing nation to another for a look of sympathy, for a hand of comfort, in 
the supreme agony of her distress. What shall they say and do? What 
kind of hand shall they put forth to fold in hers, so weak and tremulous 



THE CONQUERING FRANCE OF THE FUTURE. 17 

with this tremendous struggle ? Shall they tell her, in the midst of the 
black desolations smoking with her best blood, to arise from the ground 
and gird up her loins for another trial of the sword when the fatherless 
sons of her fallen shall be able to wield it ? Shall they by one act, or word, 
or look of condolence, suggest or admit that she has lost one inch of her 
great place or one iota of her moral power in the world in this contest of 
brute forces ? No ; a thousand times, no ! A city set upon such a hill as 
Paris, so far as the heart of its best vitality is concerned, cannot be hid, 
cannot be bombarded nor captured. The great lamp of its science and 
civilization that has lighted benighted nations and guided them through the 
dark of barbarism to the morning of an enlightened life — that lamp is 
hung too high to be reached by Krupp's mortars. In the best realm a 
nation can own, France has yet an empire unbounded by the Rhine, the 
Don, or the Volga, and no one but herself can excide an Alsace or a Lor- 
raine from this dominion. 

This terrible conflict and its issue, and other events of almost equal 
importance, have brought the civilized world to the appreciation and bal- 
ancing of other powers than those brute forces that have so long shaken 
the nations with violence or alarm. They are beginning to consider the 
spiritual place .and power of the Pope as divested of civil or secular 
sovereignty. Even the most decided Protestant peoples can and do agree 
that it would immeasurably enhance the dignity and influence of his po- 
sition if he should lay off from the majestic robe of his spiritual royalty 
the fustian scarf of temporal dominion. What they and all other outside 
nations say to tlie Pope let them now say, with equal force of argument and 
illustration, to France in this unprecedented crisis in her existence. Let 
them say to her, not in the patronizing tone of humiliating sympathy, not as 
to a fallen and humbled nation, " Put off from your regalia this gaudy Na- 
poleonic figment of military glpry. It dims the lustre of the best jewels in 
your diadem. It is to your best sovereignty what the wooden sceptre of 
civil power is in the right hand of the Pope. Go up and sit and reign on 
that higher throne which no usurper nor rival can shake or reach — the 
throne of that intellect and infinite genius to which the whole world pays 
you admiring and willing tribute. In hoc vince. In this high place of power 
you may say again, and say forever : Veni, vidi, vici. No Rhine, nor 
Pyrenees, nor sea, nor ocean shall bound this dominion of your mental 
vitality and might. The brute forces of all the outside world shall do soft 
and silent homage to this your great realm of moral power." 

If this be a turning point, a decisive crisis in the life of France, it is 
one of almost equal moment to all the other nations of Christendom. They 
3 



18 THE CONQUERING FRANCE OP THE FUTURE. 

have not only to consider her future, but to determine their own ; and 
theira is bound up in the same bundle with her destiny. Universal civil- 
ization for a generation is involved in the programme they plan for this 
yeai''s action. What is the role they propose for the two closing decades 
of the century ? Is it the one that has blackened France and Germany 
with the desolations of this bloody war ; that has furrowed their lands of 
sunny green with the red-hot ploughshare of ruin, and strewn them with a 
million graves, and sown them with the Dead Sea salt of millions of hu- 
man eyes weeping over them? Are there no voices coming up out of this 
black night of woe to reach the council-tables of cabinets to plead against 
a new history of human slaughter? 

During all this tremendous conflict the eyes of the world have been 
fixed upon England. What she ought to do and could do for her nearest 
neighbor and ally has been discussed with vigorous freedom on both sides 
of the Atlantic. Whatever decision the public mind has reached on her 
duty and ability during the wai% there is now a part for her to act for 
France which she owes to her, to herself, and to civilization. There was 
a time, if not in this war, when she ought to have '* stood by her ally." 
There was a time — and it has gone to the ineffaceable records of history — 
when Louig Napoleon invited the Powers of Europe to a Congress of 
Nations to arrange for a proportionate and simultaneous disai'mament, in 
order to lift from the peoples the increasing and crushing weight of that 
preposterous armed-peace system which has so long endangered their 
safety and consumed their revenues. If England had stood by her ally 
in that effort as faithfully as she did in their joint wars, France to-day 
might have been free from the footprint of a foreign foe, and Germany 
without a widow to mourn this bloody conflict. The poet has not exagge- 
rated the sadness of the i-eflection, " It might have been." Let the dead 
past bury that with all its forgotten things. It might have been — what 
might not have been ? — for the good of mankind and the glory of our race, 
if a single rivulet of opinion had run the other way at the council hour 
that decided the attitude and act of a great nation. Surely, if such a na- 
tion has a conscience, and the moral sensibilities of a human memory, 
England must remember, over the red and smoking desolations of France, 
how she declined her invitation to a Congress of Nations, to reduce those 
huge standing armies that have wrought, as the end of their training, 
these horrible destructions. Before and above all other nations England 
is bound by every obligation of honor, of duty to herself, to the ally pros- 
trate and bleeding on the altar of the armed peace-system, and to the 
whole world and its future, to come forward and take up the proposition 



THE CONQUERING FRANCE OF THE FUTURE. 19 

of Louis Napoleon, and press it upon the Powers of Europe with all the 
moral force of her influence. With all the humiliations that have fallen 
upon France, it would be more cruel to her spirit than any she has suf- 
fered if England should wait to have her ask with her own lips and in her 
own behalf for a reduction of the armed-peace establishments of the other 
nations to the footing of her own reduced abilities. To put upon her this 
cruel necessity would be the unkindest cut of all upon the sensibilities of 
her nature. To spare her this bitterest draught of humiliation is Eng- 
land's role and duty beyond the obligation of any other Power. There 
are more urgent considerations pressing upon her to initiate this measure 
than upon any other nation. Some of these it may be as well for us to 
suggest as for her to remember. 

No other nation in Christendom has said, paid, fought, and bled so much 
for the maintenance of a balance of power as England. A balance of what 
kind of power? Of wealth, genius, learning, manufacturing skill and 
production, capacities of commerce, acreage of territory, or increase of 
population ? No ; not one of these powers is meant to be put in the scales. 
Nothing but the balance of brute forces, of the most brutish kind, is em- 
braced in this old policy. How has she been able to make the beam lie 
level in her favor ? By hiring the brute force of other countries to put 
in her scale when her own weighed less than the brute force of France 
or Russia, or even young America when it was just out of its cradle as a 
nation. It is because she has done, sacrificed, and suffered more than 
any nation to effect and preserve a balance of power that we may urge her 
to prosecute the policy or its principle in the inverse direction. That is, 
balancing these brute force powers by leveling them downward. There 
is a mathematical verity which even the German emperor, who claimed 
to reign above the rules of grammar, would not have dared to controvert. 
It is this : " If from equals you take equals the remainders will be equals." 
No nation in Christendom has even more self-interested reasons than 
England for inducing the great Powers to apply this mathematical truth 
to their armed-peace establishments. She is at this moment at work with 
all the energies of her alarm and ability, endeavoring to keep the beam of 
these brute forces even by leveling up ; by arming the whole island, cap- 
a-pie, against some giant invader. And all this increasing armament 
gives her no sense of peace or safety. She will never attain to that sen- 
timent until she renews virtually the proposition of Louis Napoleon, or 
convokes a congress of nations to npply Euclid's verity to their policy. 
Cannot a very child in reasoning see how it would work, as well as what 
it means ? " If from equals you take equals the remainders will be 



20 THK CONQUERING FRANCE OF THE FUTURE 

equals." That is the way he puts it on the blackboard for school-boys ; 
and they might put on the council-boards of cabinets in this way : " If you 
take equal halves from your armed-peace establishments the remainder 
halves will be equal." That is clear to any boy's understanding. Does 
not this keep the beam of the brute forces level? Does not this preserve 
a balance of power? Would not this policy defend and assure England 
better than any coalition she can enlist or subsidize agaiiist this new Ger" 
many or Russia ? Let her look at the programme of her own political 
future, for free and universal education of her masses, for universal suf- 
frage, vote by ballot, for all the freedom and intelligence of opinion and 
action enjoyed by American citizens. How can she expect to keep up the 
balance-of-power regime except by this leveling-down principle? Can 
she ever raise an army, except in actual invasion, by conscription ? Can 
she balance despotisms by borrowing their dead weights to put in her 
scale ? Simultaneous and proportionate disarmament, then, is as great a 
necessity to England as to any Power in the world. 

But if England owes it to her own peace, sense and condition of safety, 
and to her new political constitution to move without delay for this simul- 
taneous disarmament, she owes it to France in the urgent obligation of 
honor as well as duty. When France arises to her feet again, how is she 
to balance these brute forces around her? With all her regular army 
destroyed, scattered, or demoralized, with half her navy transferred to her 
victorious foe, with ten milliards of francs to pay for her subjugation, 
besides her own expenses in the war and the interest of her old debt ; with 
not even seeding for her soil, and with the very roots of her agricultural 
and other industrial interests burnt out, how is she to level up to the 
armed-peace establishments of Germany and Russia ? If American 
opinion has any force or any useful work in the outside world, now is the 
time and the occasion to bring it to bear in favor of this general, simulta- 
neous, and proportionate disarmament. This is the best mission in which 
it can be employed, and this is the best victory it can win for the France we 
owe so much, and for the civilized world we aspire to lead in the path of 
our progress. Have we not been writing and speechifying boastiully for 
half a century about the influence of our ideas and institutions on Euro- 
pean nations ? Have we not been predicting through all this period that 
they must approximate their systems to ours ? Well, what part of their 
systems was most distant and dissimilar from ours ? Let every American 
who has traveled in England, France, or Germany, answer this question, 
and, ten to one, he will say, it is their large standing armies in time of 
peace. Do we wish, even for the glory of our influence, as well as for 



THE ALABAMA ACCOUNT. 21 

their good, that they shall approximate as nearly as possible to us in their 
institutions ? Then we must induce or attract them to rediu-e their armed- 
peace establishments to the standard of our>-<. On this side of our system 
lies the nearest point of their approach to us. A Congress of Nations is 
an old American idea. The very sound of the term has the ring of all 
these united continental States in it. But wlien we associate the great 
object with it, the idea embraces a sublime signiticauce to mankind. 



The Per Contra of the Alabama Account. 

With sincere respect for such officials before the bar to which they are 
trained, the court to which we must refer these claims is not an Old Baily 
tribunal, nor any American one, in which the ex parte or nisi prius aro'u- 
ment of "a Philadelphia lawyer" is to carry the day. Nor is it to be 
held in the cabin or cave of that classic Sibyl whose leaves furnish such 
a rhetorical figure to the brilliant notions of justice and adjustment which 
many American writers and speakers seem to entertain. There exist for 
many important questions which can not be solved by technical law, courts 
of equity to adjust them between individuals. If such a court of equity 
be indispensable in a country full of laws and statutes designed to meet 
every case, how much more is such a court necessary to adjust a question 
between two great nations in the absence of any thing that can be called 
a definite, settled international law ! 

Whatever, then, be the form or process of adjudication — whether it be 
by a court of arbitration or by a conference of commissioners — the case 
between us and England must go to the bar of equity. And, to the credit 
of the. American mind, I think we may say that no lower tribunal and no 
lower verdict would satisfy it. The pagan Sibyl's leaves are not the 
leaves of our account current with England in this matter. The mode of 
settlement they represent would not satisfy American notions of justice 
and equity. Suppose, for instance, England, wishing to settle the case 
satisfactorily to us, should submit it to a jury of twelve conscientious and 
intelligent Americans at Washington, before an American judge, and with 
only American counsel to represent and defend her cause. Let no one 
deem this supposition fanciful. For one, I believe the English people 
would be willing to have the case go to such a court to-morrow, and abide 
the issue. But what would be the process and issue? I would put it to 
every patriotic American to say if it would not make his cheek redden 
and tingle with shame if such a court did not bring to the case the loyal 
spirit and principles of impartial equity. The whole American nation 



22 



THE ALABAMA ACCOUNT. 



would be the most losing and dissatisfied party if full justice were not done 
to England in the presentation of her case, in the arguments of the coun- 
sel, in the charge of the judge, and the verdict of the jury. Any charge, 
suspicion, or consciousness of unfairness on their part, would smite the na- 
tion like a shame. But what would the nation expect at the outset of the 
trial? Unquestionably this — that Caleb Gushing, Mr. Evarts, and Judge 
Black, or whoever the American counsel chosen by England might be> 
should read up her case with diligent and honest care ; that they should 
present and make a full and fair use of every fact and circumstance that 
should be admitted in her behalf. Nothing less than this and their best 
learnino- and eloquence in pleading her case would satisfy the American 
people, however they might desire the verdict to be in their favor. 

Let us, then, suppose such a court to be summoned at Washington, and 
such counsel to be chosen by England, with such duties devolving upon 
them. Let any intelligent mind that remembers the historical detail, re- 
flect upon the heads of the brief which this counsel would bring into 
court, or the items per contra. It is probable such a mind would turn to 
the first and most sensitive count of the indictment, or the animus of the 
English government and people, to see what could be fairly put in against 
that charge. I will not pretend to suggest the facts the learned counsel 
woulJ adduce to meet this and all the other counts. But as no other liv- 
ing American had such opportunities as myself to become acquainted with 
the primary sources of English opinion during the war, I would like to 
indicate a few facts and circumstances which might be put among the per 
contra items. 

First, then, as to the sentiment of the English nation towards us in the 
first two years of the war. I think the current American measure applied 
to this sentiment is not American in an honest, democratic sense. What 
is called the ruling or aristocratic class has been too often and too long re- 
garded as the English nation that feels, thinks and acts, and determines 
tlie character and action of the government. Because a majority of this 
aristocratic class seemed to be against us, many of our writers and speak- 
ers, more sensitive to their opinion, yielded to the impression that the great 
masses of the English people partook of the same feeling of hostility to 
us. No impression could be more unfair. Tliese great masses were with 
us and for us with a sympathy which equal millions of one country never 
before manifested towards the people and cause of another nation. Their 
clear and honest perceptions of truth and right operated like an enlighten- 
ing conscience upon the whole public mind of England, even when it was 
not clear and certain to "the ruling classes" whether our struggle was a 



THE ALABAMA ACCOUNT. 23 

war for emancipation or only for union without emancipation. Even in 
that unhappy period of doubt in regard to this great question, these hon- 
est-hearted masses held stoutly to their faith in the justice of our cause, 
and held England, as with a sheet anchor, fast against all the inside and 
outside influences that were combined to impel her into intervention. But 
was it only a sentiment by which they clung to the right and true? Far 
from it. For nearly four years they stood the siege of the cotton famine 
with a heroic endurance never paralleled before in human patience and 
continuance. Thousands upon thousands of them let every article of fur- 
niture and comfort go one after the other for food, and sat down silent in 
the ashes of poverty, nor bated one jot from their stout will against the 
intervention into which the Confederate States had counted upon starving 
the English nation. 

On the sentiment count, then, I think the American public would ad- 
mit, as a per contra item, these four years of suffering, during which more 
than 100,000 honest, patient Lancashire operatives had to be fed with 
charity soup — men and women, and even children, who would have been 
prouder to beg from door to door than to ask or permit the English gov- 
ernment to furnish them cotton at the cost of its recognition of the inde- 
pendence of the Southern States. 

Then, as an incidental circumstance, the fact might be admitted, to what 
little value it was worth, that no neutral nation ever suffered more pecu- 
niary loss in its industrial interests from a foreign war than did England 
during the conflict in America. Of course this is comparatively a small 
and natural item of damage, but it may be worth mentioning as one of the 
circumstances upon which the Confederate States depended in counting 
upon English intervention. This large and continued loss was one of (he 
influences she had to resist in breaking down their expectations. In this 
light it might come in with other per contra memoranda. 

There is another fact, more salient and appreciable, which the American 
people must admit at no inconsiderable value, as a more tangible and pa- 
tent proof of the general policy and animus of England toward us during 
the war. It is known now, better than at any previous time, that she not 
only resisted all the influence that her "ruling class" could bring to bear 
upon her, but all the urgent and persistent pressure of the French govern- 
ment in favor of intervention to establish Southern independence. Surely 
an American court of equity would admit this fact to the full value of its 
evidence. 

Even in regard to the escape of the Alabama itself, though the English 
nation is ready, willing, and waiting, to pay the damage she inflicted on 



24 THE ALABAMA ACCOUNT. 

our commerce, our own I'ecent experience might well dispose us, and even 
make it good policy in us, to admit extenuating circumstances. We have 
had lately several cases, and we may have many more hereafter, to prove 
how our own government may be outwitted and bamboozled by blockade 
runners or privateers fitted out in the face and eyes of all our naval forces 
and authorities at Brooklyn. But no American who remembers the speech 
of Lord Stanley in Parliament will doubt that England is ready to admit 
her mistake in regard to the Alabama, and to pay what damage it did to 
us. I doubt if her counsel will institute the plea of ignorance of the 
character of the ship and its destination, or even plead the accident which, 
it is said, prevented her timely arrest, or the illness of the judicial officer 
who was directed to arrest her. But while we do not admit this plea of 
ignorance or accident to bar our claim for full damages, we must concede 
that when England did get her eyes open to these adroit and elaborate de- 
ceptions on the part of the Confederates and their sympathizers, she did 
take efficient and costly steps to prevent the sailing of other and more 
formidable ships built to break as well as run our blockade. There were 
the two tremendous rams, with their Turkish names, constructed by the 
Lairds at Birkenhead, as if for Turkey Or some other oriental Power, but 
really designed for Charleston or Mobile as blockade breakers. There 
was no positive evidence of their destination, no positive attempt at an 
aggressive act ; so the English government, to prevent the possibility of 
such an act, bought them in as for its own service. Then there was its 
law^suit in regard to the Alexandra, another suspected privateer. These 
cases may be admitted for consideration at least, to guide the course of 
our government in analogous circumstances. 

Undoubtedly the utterances of English orators and writers stung Amer- 
ican sensibilities more deeply than the money lost by all the ships sunk 
by the Alabama. But the bark- of a Roebuck, who likened himself to the 
dog Tear'em, should not drown the voices of such defenders of our cause 
as John Bright, W. E. Forster, Thomas Hughes, and hundreds of other 
noble men who stood by us in the severest crisis of our struggle with a 
power and eloquence of advocacy which should entitle them to the grate- 
ful and everlasting memory of the American people. These are the men 
that represent the majority of the English nation — the great masses of 
the people who stood so true to us through the conflict. Let the eloquent 
arguments of Bright, Argyll, Forster, Hughes, Mill, and other statesmen, 
and the more eloquent' though silent sufferings of a million of patient op- 
eratives in our behalf, be admitted to a place in the per contra memoranda. 

The last fact I will suggest for such a court of equity, is the noble and 



THE ALAR4MA ACCOUNT. ' 25 

illustrious life which Richard Cobden sacrificed for our cause. In all hu- 
man probability he Avould have been alive to-day to enrich his country and 
his age with the wealth of his character if it had not been for liis devotion 
to the justice, truth, and freedom involved in the American conflict. In- 
deed, one might almost believe he saved his strength and voice to plead 
our cause in the House of Commons. I think the last time that his per- 
suasive voice was heard in that House was in our behalf. I happened to 
be present on tliat occasion, and on sitting down he accidentally recognized 
me in the Speaker's gallery, and came and spoke to me in that old familiar 
way, so genial, and cordial, and simple. I tried to thank him as well as 
I could, as an American, for standing by us through evil and good report 
so nobly. It was the last time I ever saw him alive. The weather, which 
was exceedingly severe, aggravated the old ailment which his arduous la- 
bors had revived, and he retired to his country residence at Midhurst, to 
rest and recover strength. Before he had improved much the American 
question came up again in Parliament. The weather was still unrelent- 
ingly bitter, and his voice was weak and his strength low. But he could 
not refrain from one more effort in our behalf. He started for London, 
hoping to be able at least to make a short speech. But on his arrival his 
old ailment had come back upon him with such violence that he had to be 
driven to his lodgings instead of the House of Commons, and there he laid 
himself down and died, virtually for our cause. His life was worth much 
to the world as well as to his own country. It was worth much to us, and 
he laid it down for us in actual sacrifice. That life let* us admit into the 
per contra page in our reckoning with England. 



The Eastern Question. 



Russia from a Cosmopolitan Standpoint. 

If any nation in the world is enabled and bound by its position to view 
the great questions that agitate Europe from a cosmopolitan standpoint, 
it is America. The force and vahie of our opinion on such questions 
depend upon this point of view. The moment we descend into the low 
arena of local interests and prejudices, we lay off the dignity of the umpire 
for the badge and bludgeon of the partisan. As the position of Russia is 
henceforth to become an exciting question to the Old World, we owe it to 
her, to ourselves, and to universal civilization, to form and utter our opin- 
ion from a higher level of consideration than the one assumed by the 
partisan powers of Europe. To ascend to this point of reflection will 
cost our national mind an effort in which it has never yet succeeded. The 
power of English opinion is so great upon us, say what we will ; so much 
of our knowledge and conception of European matters comes to us through 
the English press and literature, that, in spite of our boasted independence 
of thought and action, our first views of Eui'opean nations and questions 
become, almost mechanically, English. In watching this tendency of 
American opinion, one may see it in all our leading journals of both 
politicid paities. A few days ago a leader appeared in one of the most 
influential of them not only urging the ability, but apparently the duty, 
of England to ally to herself, or subsidize Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, 
and raise an army of 400,000 men to oppose Russia's growth and march ; or 
rather to prevent her from becoming, two or tlu*ee centuries hence, as near 
a neighbor to England in India as she is now to France or America itself. 
Nothing could be more completely English than the whole argument of 
that article. It was perfectly English in its view of Russia, past, present, 



RUSSIA FROM A COSMOPOLITAN STANDPOINT. 27 

and to come. It was as full ot the old balance of power animus and the- 
ory as any Tory argument you could find in the Edinburgh Review. 

Now the very worst thing we can do to the English people by our opin- 
ion, is to adopt and express theirs on these great questions ; to justify and 
inci'ease their panics and prejudices in regard to the character, and intent, 
or even ability of their neighbor nations. And if we really have an 
honest and loyal wish for her well being in the world, the best we can do 
to promote it, is to erect a fair, impartial opinion of our own, which shall 
serve to check her drift into these periodical fantasies of suspicion and 
alarm. Our opinion should be a harbor buoy, fast anchored in a firm 
holding, not a sham lightship, drifting with the same current that bears 
her toward a lee shore of disaster. The best that America can do for her, 
or any other European nation, is to establish such a moorage for hei-, and 
any other power driving out rudderless to the wild sea of war. But 
America must re-read, if she cannot stop to re-write, for herself the histoiy 
and character of other peoples and governments, before she can anchor 
such a moorage of fair and independent opinion. She owes it to them to 
write their histories for herself, and from her own standpoint. This she 
will do some time or other; but, without waiting for that, she may read 
their histories as they have been written in the salient acts of their life and 
being. 

Of all European histories the American mind has studied, not one of 
them, probably, has been read so completely through English spectacles as 
that of Russia. I think it is safe to say, that American opinion as to a foreign 
nation has never been so completely English as in regard to that Power 
and people. And this identity of view and sentiment is as hurtful to 
England as it is unfair in us. I am conscious that this opinion is so com- 
mon to both countries, and so strong in each, that an American may be 
charged with political heresy if he ventures to view Russia from a fair, 
cosmopolitan standpoint. In attempting this, I do not wish to differ with- 
out motive from the authorities which the American public has so long 
accepted. 

It is impossible to condense within a newspaper column the structure of 
an argument which requires for its development the space of a large 
volume. In such contracted limits the statement of facts must be bald, 
and the reasoning brief. Out of this necessity, then, I think, no fair and 
impartial mind, that has well studied the subject, will demur to the state- 
ment, that no nation in the world ever did or suffered more for civilization 
in the same sj^ace of time, and with the same means, than Russia has 
done. In the way of suffering, certainly no intelligent reader of history 



28 RUSSIA FROM A COSMOPOLITAN STANDPOINT. 

will doubt the truth of that part of the statement. For several centuries 
she served as a breakwater against the barbarous and blasting hordes of 
Tartary, which else would have flooded the whole of Europe with their 
tyranny. But though she broke the flood that would have beat upon 
Germany, France, and perhaps England, she could not save herself from 
the I'uinous inundation. Though it engulfed her for centuries, she ab- 
sorbed it so that it did not spread farther west. In this long period of 
suffering for civilization — longer than the Egyptian bondage and harder 
to bear — the nations of central and western Europe had time and means 
to grow to the status and stature of independent governments and peoples. 
But their fairest historians have never recognized how much of their 
safety and growth in these centuries they owed to Russia, who braved and 
bore the worst dangers of them all. 

But Russia has done even far more than she has suffered for the civil- 
ization of the world ; and done more in the same time and with the same 
means, than any other nation, to that end. It is remarkable how rarely 
we find an English or American writer who measures her against other 
countries by these standards ; who seems even to recognize how little 
working capital she had to begin with, and what she has accomplished 
with it. Indeed, she had to import into her realm the very seeds of civil- 
ization she possessed ; or the few Scandinavian, German, Italian, Greek, 
and other foreign elements that she introduced. If all the enlightenment 
they produced were put in one lustre, it is doubtful if it would have 
made as much light as the single town of Salem could emit when St. Pe- 
tersburg was founded. In this world's history did ever a sovereign feel 
and deplore so deeply the want of this working capital of civilization as 
did Peter the Great ? How he apprenticed himself and his young nobles 
to common trades, in foreign countries ; how he scoured those countries 
for teachers of every useful art and branch of instruction, is partially re- 
corded in our school-books. From, his time to this, no nation has been 
more teachable, or learned ipore from foreign instructors, and from the 
experience and example of other countries, than Russia. Then look at 
the heterogenous populations out of which she had to construct her em- 
pire. Begin at the Arctic sea and guage them through to the Euxine, 
and from the Baltic through Siberia to Behring's Straits. Apply a moral 
standard to their races, religions, and habits, not as they are now, but as 
they were when she took them under her sceptre. Was thei'e any 
other Power in the wide w^rld that could reach them with more of the 
elements or influences of civilization ? On the whole, is not the world 
indebted greatly to her for what she has done for these barbarous popula- 



COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND CAPACITIES OF RUSSIA. 29 

tions ? Consider how comparatively brief is the space of time that slie 
has had them under her sway ; and how in this pei-iod their old pagan idol- 
atries and superstitions have been displaced for at least the nominal faith 
and worship of the Christian religion. 

And now comes that great act and proof of advancing civilization, that 
emancipated her millions of serfs, and which makes them the freemen of 
the empire, to con.stitute that middle class to be what the emancipated 
serfs or vilHans of other countries have been to them. Did any nation 
ever surpass Russia in this single act of civilization ? It is impossible for 
her to stop at this step. She must take others in the same direction. She 
is taking them rapidly and successively in every department of enlighten- 
ment and progress — in literature, in popular education, railways and all 
kinds of internal improvements. The Russia of Peter the Great is as 
dead as the England of the last Henry. The Russia of the next genera- 
tion will not be the Russia of to-day, but a nation, if not abreast, at least 
not far behind the civilization of older and more favored countries. This 
is a fact in the future almost as certain as any in arithmetical or geometri- 
cal progression. And in all these anxieties and preparations for incoming 
events, this fact must be recognized and appreciated by those who consider 
them from a cosmopolitan standpoint. 



The Commercial Relations and Capacities of Russia. 

The geographical position and producing power of Russia qualify her 
for a great part to act for the benefit of the whole Eastern hemisphere. 
What Egypt was to Canaan and other countries in time of dearth, Russia 
is to western and southern Europe in seasons of short crops. Her granaries 
pour forth a steady abundance that countries under famine cannot exhaust. 
What their stores of grain are worth to them in such a time of need, no 
nation knows better by repeated experience than England. What could 
she have done for Ireland, even with America to draw from, if she could 
not have had Odessa and other grain ports of the Black Sea to go to ? 
Now that railways and other facilities of transportation are progressing so 
rapidly, they will become more and more the granaries of Europe, which 
will supply its teeming populations with cheaper bread than they can grow 
at home. Every year Russia's producing power will become a more vital 
necessity to England and other countries of western Europe. This she 



30 COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND CA PACITIES OF RUSSIA. ' 

and they are coming to recognize more and more distinctly. Their vital 
or material interests, more truthful and reliable than their political instincts, 
have and feel an immense stake in all the railways and internal improve- 
ments in Russia that tend to increase this producing power, and to make 
it more accessible and available to them. In a word, they want to bring 
Russia nearer to them ; and with one hand they are lending her money 
and helping her to this end, while with the other, or political hand, they 
are trying to push her up against the icebergs of tfie frozen ocean. 

But grain is only one of the productions which Russia supplies to 
western Europe. Her iron, flax, hemp, tar, and turpentine are increasing 
and indispensable necessities to them. In the Crimean war the Irish 
linen manufactories would have stopped, and Ireland would have suffered 
a flax famine as severe as was the cotton famine to England, if it had not 
been for a supply of the raw material imported at the enchancement of 50 
per cent, through Prussia. Every ship in the British navy that thundered 
in the Black Sea or Baltic, showed its sails and cordage of Russian hemp, 
and every rope hardened with Russian tar. In spite of all orders in 
council or proclamations to the contrary, England imported during the 
war nearly as much from Russia as in time of peace, and paid nearly 
twice as much for it. Indeed she could not carry on the war without 
commercial help from her enemy. 

But with all these vital or food-relations to the rest of Europe,*with all 
that Russia is commercially now, and is to be to the largest division of 
the human race, it is distinguished over all other large regions of the globe 
by one remarkable physical characteristic. It is virtually a riverless 
empire. It is full of rivers great and small, but either they run to no 
ports of her own, or they are worthless for commerce. Those that flow 
into the northern sea are frozen up half the year, and cannot be counted. 
The narrow straits that connect lakes Ladoga and Onega can hardly be called 
rivers. The only one really that Russia may call her own in Europe is the 
Dwina, with the port of Riga at its mouth ; and that is inaccessible and un- 
available during the winter months. I would earnestly commend to the reader 
a few minutes' study of the map of that vast and important empire. Aside 
from the subject under notice, he must be struck with a peculiarity unparal- 
leled in any region of the globe of equal extent. He will see that tlie old 
proverb, "rivers to the ocean run," is not true of Russian rivers, or seas either; 
Count the rivers that run into the Black Sea. They are many and large, 
but none of them really debouch in Russian territory. To appreciate this 
singular circumstance we naust apply to it an easy standard of measure- 
ment. Imagine, then, a great bayou in the Mississippi just below Vicks- 



COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND CAPACITIES OF RUSSIA. 31 

burg, of the dimensions of the Black Sea. Imagine all the rivers in the 
United States, from Maine to Texas, to run into this salt water bayou, and 
that all the commerce that floats on those rivers has to pass through that 
short length of the river that connects the inland sea with tht; Gulf of 
Mexico. Then realize, if you can, that this short and narrow strait is 
called the Bosphorus, and that N<iw Orleans is Constantinople, and that 
all the commerce of the United States east of th-3 Rocky Mountains that 
finds its way to the Atlantic, has to pass between the forts of a foreign 
nation, of a race, language, and religion as alien to us as any pagan people 
can be. Then in the north we have the St. Lawrence, and we can get 
out to the ocean that way except in the winter, when Quebec becomes a 
Riga to us. It must be very difficult for an American mind to imagine 
our great country subjected to such conditions, not by nature, but by 
dynastic arrangements that are in open and incessant war with nature. 
But this illustrates the commercial position of Russia almost to the •smallest 
detail of its character. Just consider this fact for a moment. With all 
the extent of her empire, and with all its px-oductive power, she ha^ not a 
single port of her own in Europe that is open all the year round. 

Wliile the map is in your hands, just glance at the Russian territory in 
Asia, and see how its rivers and seas are isolated worse still from the 
woi'ld's oceans. See what long rivers run northward into the Arctic 
■ ocean, or the Obi, Yenisei, Lena, and others. But what is their commer- 
cial worth to the world ? Look the other way, and see the length and 
course of the famous Volga and Ural. These fall into the Caspian, a 
warmer sea ; but they might as well run into our Lake of the Woods, 
so far as ocean connection and commerce are concerned. Five minutes' 
study of the physical geography of the Russian empire will impress any 
fair and intelligent mind with an approximate sense of the bars and 
embargoes which nature has imposed upon its commerce with the rest of 
the world. This sense will prepare one to appreciate the bars and embar- 
goes which a coalition of suspicious and jealous Powers is endeavoring to 
add to those nature has imposed, or to aggravate and perpetuate them. 

If England, France, or Prussia had been in Russia's place, either of those 
Powers, a hundred years ago, would have possessed itself of the right of 
way to the Mediterranean, as we did to the Gulf of Mexico, and by more 
forcible means. Would England have tolerated such a condition a single 
year ? Would she have suffered a Turkish Constantinople at the mouth 
of the Thames, and her ships to pass to and from the sea between the forts 
of a Mohammedan Power ? But this is the very condition for which she 
has poured out so much precious blood and treasure to fasten forever upon 



32 COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND CAPACITIES 0¥ RUSSIA. 

Russia. This is the prime object aimed at in all these leagues, coalitions, 
and conferences against that country. And these allies, when they 
wrestled her to the earth, and put their feet on her neck for her suspected 
attempt to break this condition, charge her with treachery for attempting 
or purposing again to throw it off after they had fettered it upon her anew 
as she lay exhausted on the ground. And, mirabile dictu, Anglicised 
American opinion sides mechanically with theirs, and approves their 
coercion. 

What does " neutralizing" the Black Sea mean, as stipulated in the 
Paris Conference, after Russia had been overpowered by the four allied 
Powers that pitched into her in behalf of civilization'? It means in plain 
and honest English, a perpetual blockade of the Russian navy in her frozen 
ports in the North Baltic. It means that none of her war ships shall ever 
get into the Mediterranean or the Atlantic except by the roundabout way of 
the Cattagat and Skagerack. It means that they shall never be allowed 
to enter the Mediterranean except under the British guns at Gibraltar. 
And does any other nation load more ships for the world in that sea than 
Russia ? And what is the reciprocation, or the equivalent, conceded by 
the allied Powers for this blockade ? This, that they will not send their 
ships of war into the Black Sea in time of peace ! That is all. They 
might as well promise that they would not send them into Lake Ontario. 
The Black Sea is not on. the road to any other country than Russia, any 
more than Lake Ontario is to any other country than ours. If they go 
there at all in peace it is to menace or admonish Russia ; if in war, it is to 
attack her. 

This, then, is but a glance at the phy.sical position and the commercial 
capacities and relations of Russia. It is a mere peep over that structure 
of fanatical suspicion and jealousy by which western Europe is trying to 
bar her way to the seas ' they claim and use without restriction ; to com- 
press her growth ; to weaken and thwart her civilizing power ; to shut 
her away from any new points of contact with the more enlightened world. 
Now it is in regard to the animus and aim of this policy that America is in 
duty bound to form and express a fair, dispassionate, independent opinion 
of her own. I would fain hope that the preceding and succeeding facts 
and reflections may induce at least a few intelligent and thoughtful minds 
to review, and, perhaps, correct the impression they have hitherto enter- 
tained in regard to the " Eastern Question." 



RUSSIA AS A POLITICAL NEIGHBOR AND POWER. 33 



Russia as a Political Neighbor and Power. 

We have considered some of the aspects and characteristics of Russia 
as a civilizing, producing, and commercial power. These have been 
presented from a cosraopohtan stand-point, or that point of view which, 
we may hope, the American mind may be yet trained to adopt when 
forming an opinion on these European questions that are agitating the 
Old World. An American opinion, unanimous, clear and vigorous, 
uttered from such a high level of reflection, is the only leverage of our 
moral power on the issue of tliese questions. And England is now and 
must ever be our point (Tappui for this leverage. If we move the Euro- 
pean Avorld for its good by our opinion, it must be by its force on the 
public and governing mind of England. Until the tongue she and we 
speak shall become the universal language of Europe, she is the only 
nation, as it were, that leans on our bosom, puts her ear to our lips, and 
her fingers to the pulse of our sentiment. If it can be made to beat, and 
breathe, and speak as it should, it will do more than any other moral 
influence in the world to break the spell of those periodical fanaticisms of 
suspicion and alarm which have so often plunged her, and other nations 
with her, into aimless and calamitous wars, and which are now again 
threatening her and them with heavier disasters to civilization. No other 
living American can have greater cause or desire than myself to contrib- 
ute what little influence he can to the formation of an American opinion 
that shall work this immeasurable good to her, and through her to the 
rest of the world. If any intelligent Englishman, in his own or in this 
country, shall happen to notice these reflections, I believe he will recognise 
in them a fair and generous spirit toward England, and an earnest and 
loyal desire to promote her well-being, even in the strongest phrases and 
statements of the argument. 

There is no other Power in the world that is now and ever will be 
such a close, conterminous neighbor to so many nations as Russia* 
Indeed, until we bought her estate in America, her empire extended 
through three continents, and abutted upon countries of almost every 
race, and language, and government on the globe. For a hundred years 
or more, she has been almost a universal neighbor, or one to European, 
Asiatic, and American nations. And now I would ask any thoughtful, 
reading American or Englishman to bring his political theodolite and 
level, and take the altitude, or the right ascension or declination of 
any people bordering upon Russia, and see if they have been lowered 
5 



34 RUSSIA AS A POLITICAL NEIGHBOR AND POWER. 

one iota by their proximity to her. Take Sweden, for example. She 
may be called Russia's nearest neighbor, or nearest to her right arm of 
power. Has that small nation suffered in its interests or institutions by 
this neighborhood ? With all the blood and treasure England has poured 
out for Spain, and with all the protection she has extended to that coun- 
try, has it lived a freer or purer political life than Sweden has done, 
almost encircled by the right arm of Russia? Follow her boundary line 
west and south, from the mouth of the Neva to the mouth of the Amoor, 
and see if you can find a people that has been depressed by her near 
neighborhood. Poland, who invaded and half subjugated Russia for many 
centuries, died of heart disease, like the republic of Venice ; and all the 
doctors in the world could not keep her alive and whole as a nation, 
because she rent herself asunder in the convulsions of her malady. And, 
we may say in passing, there is more hopeful life in each of the three 
parts than there was in them al! when a factious, discordant, and corrupted 
whole. Look at Prussia, from the time she was a small duchy to this 
day of her mighty empire. She has abutted upon Russia for the whole 
length of her eastern boundary in the most naked proximity, with not 
even a Rhine between them. Has she been put back in the development 
of her political or educational institutions by this near neighborhood ? 
Has her political life been chilled at its pulse by the frosty breath of Rus- 
sian despotism ? Look at Turkey. Have the masses of the people of 
that country suffered in their political, religious or manhood rights by the 
neighborhood of Russia ? Suffered ! they owe it to her influence if cen- 
turies ago they had not sunk under Mahommedan fanaticism to a depth 
of degradation and oppression that no serfs nor helots of any other 
country or age ever reached. Suffered! Why, the Jews under 
Roman or Assyrian rule never had greater occasion or longing for 
their Messiah to come for their deliverance, than have the Christian 
populations of Turkey for the coming of Russia to Constantinople, to 
break such a yoke of bondage as the Jews never wore, even in Egypt. 
What was Nebuchadnezzar, or Darius, or any Roman emperor, or Pha- 
roah himself, to the Jews compared with what the Turkish sultans have 
been to the Christians of their realm, numbering two thirds of their 
population ? Now, if never before, the universal American mind ought 
to have learned that golden rule of democratic arithmetic that counts in 
the census of a nation every human being in it, of whatever color, condi- 
tion, race, or religion. We are doing that now with the millions lifted 
from slavery into oiir great and free peoplehood. Russia is doing the 
same with the millions of her emancipated serfs. The time then has come 



RUSSIA AS A POLITICAL NEIGHBOR AND PO^^R. 35 

when America will sin against her own soul if she longer follows the 
sentiment of Western Europe, and refuses to recognise the large Christian 
majority of the inhabitants of Turkey as the Turkish nation. 8uch a sin 
will be doubled in ^^uilt and shame if she sides with any European coali- 
tion that shall renew the attempt to fetter that majority with new thongs 
of iron to the Mahomraedan rule. 

Who is afraid? What civilized nation has anything to fear from 
Russia's possessing her Mississippi to its mouth ? What has mankind to 
fear in case that she should have the city of the Constantines, the centre 
of the old christian civilization of the world, as the fulcrum-point for the 
leverage of her civilizing power ? Would that increase the proximity 
of her neighborhood to Sweden, Prussia or Austria? If she is such a 
dangerous foe to civilization, to her nearest neighbors ; if she has been 
plotting to trample upon their rights and liberties, why need she wait 
until she gets to Constantinople to carry out her schemes ? Would her 
army and navy be any nearer Sweden, Prussia, Austria, France or Eng- 
land at that point than at Cronstadt ? But let us come to the very head 
and front of the suspicion that has so long dominated England and involved 
her in sacrific of blood and treasure. Would Russia be any nearer India 
at Constantinople than she is now ? If any one thinks so, let him take 
the map and tell us the road by which she could reach India with an 
army more easily and speedily than by the road she owns and is on at 
this moment. Why, she is on the Caspian Sea now, with great rivers 
running through her territory into it. And that sea is neai^er to India by 
thousands of miles, measured by facility of transportation, than the Medi- 
terranean. Let any intelligent man consider the character of the country 
and the populations between the Caspian and India, and try to imagine 
the attempt of a Russian force to march upon Calcutta or Delhi. If such 
a force is not to go by land, and by this route ; if it is not to bore its road 
through the Himalayas, or cross their heights of snow and ice, how "is it 
to go by water from Constantinople ? Just think of the attempt to pass a 
Russian tleet with 100,000 men through the Suez Canal. Let us suppose 
that Russiacould build, borrow or hire 200 ships, half of which should be able 
to carry 1000 men each, and the other half arms, amunition, horses and 
forage enough for the whole force. Think of the insanity of putting these 
two hundred ships and all their armaments on that canal. Fancy them 
bow to stern midway in the narrow channel when a dozen men with their 
picks and shovels should cut the embankment and settle the whole fleet in 
the mud, with a row of masts three miles long standing up like a line of 
dead trees in the desert. Imagine the condition of such an army in this 
predicament, and the folly of exposing it to such destruction. 



36 RUSSIA AS A POLITICAL NEIGHBOR AND POWER. 

But if a Russian force could not go to India by land through or over 
the Himalayas and intervening populations, nor by water via the Suez 
Canal, how Avould the possession of Constantinople give it any additional 
facility to reach England's Indian emjjire, either by land or sea ? It is 
evident there would be no new, shorter or better way by land. The only 
new way by sea would be via the Mediterranean, under the British guns 
at Gibraltar, and around the Cape of Good Hope ; and that would be more 
dangerous than from the mouth of the Neva through the Bailie. But 
admit the possibility which excites this baseless fear. Suppose Russia 
could reach India, by sea or land, with a force equal to that which she 
sent to the Crimea in the desperate struggle with the four allied Powers. 
Certainly this admission must be as large as any intelligent Englishman 
could ask us to make. Well, what would a Russian army of 100,000 
encounter on the frontier of India ? Why, an empire containing a popu- 
lation three or four times as large as that of the whole Russian realm ; an 
army outnumbering its own force by three to one ; seaports of great 
capacity, full of ships : inland cities, in Scripture simile, " walled up to 
heaven;" anew and. vigorous English nation in Australia, that would 
hear by telegraph the first footstep of a Russian soldier on the Himalayas, 
or on their southern slopes. To see such a nation as England subject 
itself to the bondage of such a fear as this ; to see her pour out blood and 
treasure like water under the fantasy of these suspicions, ought to affect 
us, as her posterity, as the nakedness of Noah affected his saddened sons. 
All but one short century in the last thousand years of England's histoi y 
is our history and our glory. We know she is brave. Tlie red seals ui 
her valor, like threaded brilliants, encircle the globe. Never did a nation 
face and fight the actual giants that offered her battle with stouter cour- 
age. Never did a nation so shake with fear before the impalpable 
spectres of fancy. 

If England would say to us, in answer to this opinion : " Physician, 
heal thyself;" or, "put yourself in my place," we ought and are able to 
reply ; '' We have done both. We have never been attacked by such a 
fear of our neighbors. Ever since we have been a nation we have not 
been afraid of you, nor you of us, as to any invasion of each other's 
territory planned in time of peace. We have divided this continent with 
you from sea to sea. For hundreds of miles not a river or mountain 
separates us. In some cases the boundary line may run between the 
kitchen and parlor of the same house. The St. Lawrence is a northern 
Mississippi, with its immense bayous mostly on our side, while its mouth 
is in your territory. Your American family is one with ours in speech, 



RUSSIA AS A POLITICAL NEIGHBOR AND POWER. 37 

religion, and more intimate affinities. It would doubtless be a great 
advantage to them to cast in their lot with ours, and become a happy and 
influential part of one great continental nation. Perhaps you think so 
yourself; it is quite certain you believe we think so. Nor can you for a 
moment doubt our ability to make this territory part of our own, if we 
were so disposed. Then why do you not send an army of 100,000 men 
to defend your provinces against us ? For this, ^nd no other possible 
reason : you have an abiding confidence in our good faith and disposition. 
You believe us incapable of harboring such intentions as you impute to 
Russia, who has shown as little disposition to trespass upon your territory 
as we have ever done. What can be her motive and temptation to annex 
India across the Himalayas compared with ours to annex your American 
provinces, if it could be effected honorably to all parties ? Then we 
would earnestly exhort you, for your best good, to concede to* Russia a 
little of that confidence you repose in us. We can say this from our own 
experience ; for we have proved her as a neighbor." 

For twenty-five years, if no more, Russia has been a nearer neigiibor 
to us than she could be to England in India, even if she were to-day at 
Constantinople. The treasures of California were as rich as any she could 
seize in India. When they were richest they were utterly defenceless. 
They were farther from our navy yard at Brooklyn or Norfolk than is 
Calcutta from Portsmouth or London. Two Russian frigates, each with 
a thousand men, from the mouth of the Araoor, might have captured Sati 
Francisco and all our Pacific settlements. We all knew that, but we 
never put an additional sloop of war on the Pacific for fear of such a 
Russian invasion. Why not? Because we believed her not only incapa- 
ble of such an act, but also of such an intention. We had faith in her 
honorable disposition. We carried out in our thought that golden rule 
which should govern the deportment and disposition of nations toward 
each other: we believed that Russia would not do unto us what we Avould 
not do unto her. If we could inspire England with like faith in tliat nation 
and her nearer neighbors, it would work more for her peace and safety, 
and honor too, than all the coalitions she could organize. 



38 TURKEY'S VALUE TO THE WORLD. 

Turkey's "Value to the World. 

It is a phenomenon in the moral world, which never before and never 
elsewhere had a parallel, that tlie great Christian nations that have poured 
out their blood and treasure in rivers for Turkey, feel and recognize most 
fully her utter worthlessness to civilized humanity and to herself. An 
English writer, a few ,weeks ago, who doubtless defended the Crimean 
war, and would urge his country to plunge into another for the same ob- 
ject, complains of the heavy bill of costs that falls upon the Christian na- 
tions of Western Europe to keep that Mahommedan power on its legs, or, 
rather, squatting on its Turkish mat, in time of peace. He says the an- 
nuity of sustentation that England, France, and other Christian countries 
pay for this purpose in loans has amounted to £10,000,000, or $50,000,000, 
for most of the years since the war with Russia. And this writer goes on, 
witli an lionest simplicity of wonderment, to inquire what has been done 
with the money; where and what are the railways it has built in Turkey; 
what are the public roads, internal improvements and useful and re-pi'o- 
ductive investments that can be shown for all this borrowed capital. 
There is Egypt, a little slice of a country, sandwiched between two des- 
erts, and hasped to Turkish rule by the irons forged and fastened by Chris- 
tian Powers. She has borrowed money too, on her own credit, which the 
Sultan wanted and claimed for his own purposes. But she has the Suez 
Canal to show as one of her assets in favor of civilization. But what 
great public works has Turkey to sliow for all the money that she has bor- 
rowed in England, France, Holland, and Germany, since the Crimean 
war, which was to galvanize her into the activity and progress of civilized 
life? To this question of the English writer let us add one more impor- 
tant and urgent still, and on the same line of reflection. 

It is natural and right that the capitalists of the present day, and the 
nations to whom they belong, and whose wealth they disburse in foreign 
loans, should begin to inquire what. Turkey has done with the money they 
have lent her. It is natural and proper that they should begin to look a 
little anxiously to see how all this hard-earned money of Christian indus- 
tries and commerce has been invested; what practical, tangible securities 
it has produced; in a word, what assets Turkey would leave available for 
them if she should sink into bankruptcy under her protested paper. They 
know the Sultan would leave a lot of palaces, seraglios, harems, and many 
gewgawries of oriental luxury and dissipation ; but what solid works and 
values could be placed in the inventory as her securities?* It is pretty 
certain and clear what the results of an examination of the books of that 
country would be before taking an inventory of the available properties 



TURKEY'S VALUE TO THE WORLD. 39 

left to its creditors. But if they find that all their lent gold was lavished 
upon the fantastic fripperies of the Ottoman dynasty, they will have this 
fact to remember, that their loans to Turkey were perfectly voluntary; 
that they took these loans with their eyes wide open to the character and 
habits of that government. If they are not satisfied as to the re-product- 
ive results of their voluntary loans, what has the civilized world to say as 
to the results of the forced loans 4hat Turkey has levied upon it? For 
several centuries she has set herself down on the very bosom of the Old 
"World, and stretched her limbs over the most ancient and sacred centres 
of its civihzation and history — upon Jerusalem, Alexandria and Athens, 
upon Tyre and Sidon, and Smyrna and Damascus, as well as Constantino- 
ple, and other cities and centres of moi'e modern times. Just feel the 
pulse of the moral and political life of every country and city on which 
one of the fingers, not to say a foot, of Turkey I'ests; then say and believe 
if you can that she is any thing less or else than a huge nightmare, lying- 
right athwart the very breast of the world, chilling and stopping the cir- 
culation of blood between its head and feet. Is not the time of reckoning 
nearly come ? Is it too early, after these sad centuries, for the Christian 
nations to take an inventory of Turkey's assets to humanity? to demand 
the results of its forced loans of so many capitals of ancient civilization ? 
to inquire searchingly what they were when she laid her paralyzing hand 
upon them, and what they are now, and what they can be, under her rule? 
Let them do this fairly and honestly, and then see if, in face of all this 
history, they can unite in a new coalition to squander more precious blood 
and treasui'e to perpetuate her power and domination. 

Neither the English nor American mind is ignorant or insensible as to 
the cliaracter of Turkey, and to the history it has made in the world. 
This has been taught and illustrated in the school-books of both countries, 
especially in this. Fifty years ago our geographies represented, in rude 
but graphic wood cuts, the only activities which have distinguished Turkey 
above the most barbarous nations. In these homely pictures she was seen 
busy at her first, her old, and only work. We children saw her sawing in 
sunder, breaking and mutilating the Corinthian columns of Grecian- tem- 
ples, as if the choicest and costliest monuments of civilization in marble 
were as hateful and dangerous to her bloody fanaticism as the great library 
of Alexandria itself. And, what is strange above all other moral phe- 
nomena of modern times, the crusades of the Middle Ages have been 
transformed by the ruling spirit of the ruling policies of Christendom. 
Once its thinly-peopled lands poured forth their armed hosts to rescue Je- 
rusalem and the holy places, so precious to their religious faith, from the 



40 TURKEY'S VALUE TO THE ATORLD. 

clutches of Mahomet or of his possession and rule. Now, after six cen- 
turies more of the history of that rule, the greatest crusades these same 
Christian Powers can organize are in defense and perpetuation of the sys- 
tem; — as it Avere, to re-build the tomb of Mahomet over the sepulchre of 
Clirist, and a Turkish harem over the holy home of His immaculate 
mother. The Crimean war was one of these crusades, and the four Pow- 
ers that waged it numbered in their sealms more souls than breathed in 
Europe in the time of Peter the Hermit. We are now threatened with 
another crusade for the same object. England, our self-blinded but noble 
mother, with more vitality of Christian life beating in her soul than in all 
the nations she summons to this crusade for the rescue of the crescent — 
England is making ready to lead again; to take the hard-earned bread 
from her children's mouths and throw it, soaked in their blood, to the dogs 
of another war for Mahomet! 

Why? What is Turkey to England or England to Turkey, that she 
can rush foremost, and blindmost, into another crusade to prevent the 
Cross from superseding the Crescent at Constantinople — that old capital 
of Christianity ? Our Webster's grand figure about England's morning 
drum beating a reveille around all the awakening continents is more than 
realized in her better missionaries of civilization, that sound the reveille of 
Christ's gospel in lands and tribes that never heard her war-drum. How 
strange and sad the fact ! — that she should summon the Cross-bearing na- 
tions to an Armageddon, lest a Christian Power should remove the dead 
corpse that lies athwart the very highway of Christian civilization which 
she has labored for centuries to cast up all round the globe ! Of all the 
discordant noises that war ever made on earth, none could so jar and drown 
the hopeful harmonies of human progress, or the consistencies of Christian 
policy, as the voice of England's war-trumpet sounding the charge of the 
Crescent against the Cross, lest this should regain its old capital and glory 
in the East. 

Since this American Republic first had a being and a voice among the 
nations, no juncture in the Old World has arisen at which that being and 
voice could more fitly and effectually pay their debt to universal humanity 
and to God's temporal kingdom on earth, than at this turning crisis of civ- 
ilization involved in " The Eastern Question." It is localising and belit- 
tling this question to call it Eastern. It is a question of the whole world, 
involving the progress and interests of all mankind. In moral proximity 
it is the nearest question of the Old World to us of this continent. In this 
sense we are fast becoming an Eastern nation, more eastern than England 
can ever be. Our Pacific shore and Asia's are being brought lip to lip. 



TURKEY'S VALUE TO THE WORLD. 4]^ 

Another decade will convey the intercourse and speech of near neighbors 
between tbem. We have more vital than material interests in this ques- 
tion. "We have reason and motive to claim a right of way for our civiliza- 
tion westward through Asia via Constantinople. We have reason to urge, 
in behalf of humanity, that that old Pharos tower of Christian enlighten- 
ment, that so long held aloft its glorious lamp over the centre of the world, 
and over its middle centuries of progress, shall no longer stand, an extin- 
guished lighthouse, to block and blacken the high road of Christian civili- 
zation across the hemisphere, to which it was once, and should be again, 
such a central and shining light. And we can wish and say all this without 
wishing ill or evil to Turkey. We have just learned, and other nations 
are learning, to number all the inhabitants of the national domain into the 
grand totality of its peoplehood, and to give the rule to its majority. The 
Ottoman dynasty and rule may die ; it must die ; and then only can Tur- 
key begin to live ; then alone can its great majority, its true peoplehood, 
shake off its fetters, arise to its feet, and walk erect the broad pathway of 
the Christian nations. In raising downtrodden millions to their feet for 
such a march, we have stood and wrought nearer to the side of Russia than 
to any other nation in the last decade. We may well rejoice, if we can- 
not share, with her in the uplifting of the great majority of Turkey to the 
political footing of other Christian peoples. And we may as heartily re- 
joice for, if not with, England at this consummation. No other nation could 
derive more good from it than she. The best service we can do her is to 
induce and enable her to see this with her own eyes. There is a condition 
from which no coalition ever can or ever will release her.. She might as 
well hope to arrest the force and law of gravitation by " a foreign policy," 
as to avert that condition. Russia is now, and ever will be, her nearest 
civilized neighbor in Asia. There is a vast space yet between them. But 
let us admit her fear, and our hope, that this rough and savage interval 
shall be swallowed up in time ; that Russia shall abut upon her northern 
line for its whole length. Would not the Russians be as good, peaceful 
and profitable neighbors as the Afghans, or any other tribes of similar 
character? Would they not buy as many of her goods, and make as much 
lucrative commerce with her as these uncivilized and costly customers ? 
Would not Turkey under Russian rule, under a development that should 
raise from the dead cities and centers and populations buried alive under 
Mahommedanism, be worth to England ten times its present value ? 

It is time not only for England but for America to prepare for our mu? 
tual relations to Russia in the Oriental world. These three nations are 
to form an isosceles triangle which shall include most of Eastern Asia. 
6 



42 TURKEY'S VALUE TO THE WORLD. 

Russia's line already extends from Riga, at the mouth of the Dwina, across 
both continents to the mouth of the Amoor. England's line starts at an 
acute angle with Russia's in the northwest corner of India, and diverges 
eastwai'd toward Southern China, and the world will not complain if it 
reaches the Pacific. The base of this triangle is the Pacific coast, in- 
cluding commercial China and Japan. The whole length of this base is 
now brought broadside on to our Pacific America. In all the years to 
come, we shall be nearer to that base than England, or even Russia. The 
ceaseless and increasing activities of our commerce, civilization and Chris- 
tianity must penetrate and permeate it with a new life. Then have we 
not a national as well as a human motive and reason to urge England to 
desist from her old antagonism to Russia ; no longer to kick against the 
pricks of a Providence that is shaping the great ends of humanity, inclu- 
ding her own ? It is not armed coalitions she needs to form, but enlight- 
ened and large-minded co-partnerships in spreading her own civilization 
pver the world. Where can she look for partners for this great work in 
Asia ? Is it not as clear as day that Russia and America are her only 
possible or practicable partners on that continent ? Are they not partners 
with her there now by preoccupation ? — and is not possession nine points 
in the law and motive force of that civilizing power which is to transform 
Asia ? Would that our American mind could ascend to this high level of 
reflection, and then raise England's to the same standpoint; that they 
might look off together toward the morning of their great and common 
destiny and duty. They would soon see a light they never beheld before — 
a light that would reveal the darkness of those low-ground " foreign poli- 
cies" which have cost the world so much blood and treasure. 



General Intemational Questions. 



The Home Cost of a "Foreign Policy/' 
What does progress mean, as applied to the life, character, and move- 
ment of nations? The term is on the lips of the slowest of them as a 
watch-word. It is used to express and measure the total result of all the 
great steps and works of civilization. It does not stand as Finis does at 
the end of a book, written by a Carlyle or Macauley ; not as an end at 
all, but as the conjunction and in an unbroken sentehce; as a vital bit in 
the syntax of human achievements that links the immediate past with the 
immediate future ; and more than this : that takes hold of the future and 
shapes it under its powerful and plastic influence and impulse. When the 
first steam-ship crossed the Atlantic against the dictum of a distinguished 
professor of science, the two nations that hailed the achievement did not 
write Jinis at the end of the voyage, but initium; not the conclusion Ijut 
tha beginning, and the hundred steamers that prow the oceans prove their 
faith and the fact on which it was built. All that these steam-winged 
fleets have accomplished or promised is expressed by the only word that 
could measure it — Progress. The electric wires that beat warm under 
seas and oceans with the pulse of sundered continents, bring mourning 
nations of both hemispheres around the coffin of a Dickens or a Peabody, 
or thrill them with the same hour's gladness at the news of a joyful event 
that touches the common sympathies and interests of all peoples. All 
these daily enacted marvels, overleaping in reality heights and depths im- 
agination could not climb or sound in years young men may remember ; 
all these feats of human thought and skill ; the Suez Canal, the Mt. Cenis 
Tunnel, and all the other internal improvements and international works 
wrought in these last decades, are lumped together in the word Progress. 
But all these prodigious acts and activities for the more intimate inter- 
course and material well-being of nations have not outrun nor outmeasured 



44 THE HOME COST OF A "FOREIGN POLICY." 

their movements and efforts to advance the higher interests of their moral 
life and being. Take England, for example, during the last ten years. 
Look at the questions that have stirred town, village, parish, hamlet, 
church, chapel, and school, with vigorous discussion and activity of thought. 
These questions have related to the political, social and moral, and intel- 
lectual elevation of the great masses of the people; to the duty and ne- 
cessity, and advantage of removing all those unjust and invidious inequal- 
ities which old laws and customs had created and perpetuated; in a word, 
to cut off the past in regard to this old hereditary condition of the people ; 
to transform the home policy which ha.d so long suppressed their manhood 
rights, and to put them on the same footing before the law, and by the 
law, as the citizens of \\\q United States; on the same footing before the 
ballot-box, before the pulpit, and before the school-master's desk ; to en- 
dow every English man, woman, and child with the same political, moral, 
and intellectual possibility and privilege that the American government 
could bestow or recognize. 

Now in adopting this new domestic policy England had to change rad- 
ically, if not wholly to abandon, the one she had pursued for centuries. 
Was it not her duty to adopt this new home policy? Did she begin too 
early? Has she carried it too far? Has she given it too much time, 
thought, and money? Did she not owe all these to her people? Have 
any outside Powers right to complain that she has been too much absorbed 
in these home matters? that she ought to have left her children to eat the 
crumbs that fell from the table of her wealth, while she gave its ample 
loaves to *■'■ Foreign Policy f She did this last thing for centuries. Since 
this very one commenced, her foreign policy has cost her more money 
than she ever paid for the education and moral improvement of her peo- 
ple since she was born as a nation. And yet there are even American 
journalists and oi'ators, of both political parties, who seem to reproach her 
with inconsistency in not adhering to her dead past; in not holding fast to 
the traditions of her old foreign policy. They almost taunt her with 
meanness and selfishness in neglecting or undervaluing her military pres- 
tige in the prize ring of the fighting Powers; in allowing a great war to 
take place in Europe without taking her old lead in it, whatever its object 
or origin. They seem to indorse the sentiment of a pugilistic Englishman, 
ndignant at his country's neutrality — "We ought to fight somebody." 
What did he mean by that expression ? Just what they imply by reproach- 
ing England for her neutral attitude: that her first duty and dignity re- 
quire her to look to her military prestige — as if that alone could preserve 
her high place, her first rank among the nations. Progress, in reference 



THE HOME COST OF A "FOREIGN POLICY." 45 

to the home interests of her own people, or to her domestic policy, means 
radical change, almost complete transformation ; but in regard to her for- 
eign policy, progress should mean unswerving adhesion to the past — its 
unmodified perpetuation. Those who have read attentively the leading 
American journals, and the speeches of many of our leading politicians, 
must have been struck with these opinions, expressed or implied, in regard 
to England's attitude in the great struggle between France and Germany, 
and in other wars on the continent. 

It is quite natural that an illustrious French statesman and historian, 
like Guizot, should adopt these views of a foreign policy. France never 
had a Washington of her veneration to enjoin upon her to "avoid entan- 
gling alliances" with foreign nations. Her foreign policy has always re- 
versed this principle. Let us glance at one paragraph of Guizot's letter 
to Gladstone, and we shall see how fully and forcibly he brings out the 
idea that a foreign policy should have the first and largest place in the 
thoughts and acts of a powerful government ; that the elevation of its awn 
people is a secondary, incidental woi-k, which may be attended to when 
there is nothing more important to be done abroad. He says: 

"Although the voice of England is still heard in the discussion of the 
various difficulties which have for so long disturbed Europe, she has, little 
by little, ceased to consider foreign affairs as -the principal object of her 
policy. Her thought and attention have been chiefly directed to civil ad- 
ministration and- home interest, to the condition of the various parts of 
the British empire, namely, of Ireland, India and the colonies, and their 
relation to the mother country. She has initiated parliamentary reform, 
and modified judicial, ecclesiastical, commercial, and colonial laws, national 
education, and the police regulations. So that the government which was 
formerly considered the most obstinately conservative in all Europe has 
taken its place among advanced reformers. I am far from blaming this 
new direction of -thought and civil administration in your country, and I 
do not question the value or special need of the various reforms which 
you have instituted. I am convinced that on the whole England is more 
equitably governed and more prosperous than she has ever been. But 
she should not and she must not forget that she owes the rapid develop- 
ment of her greatness and the impression of power which she produced 
on the whole world to her foreign policy for forty years. Is it possible 
that England now, in the midst of a great European crisis, can remain 
indifferent and supine without being accused of selfishness or pusilanimity, 
and speedily losing her political and moral influence throughout the whole 
world? Surely the events of the last few years in Europe, and the strug- 
gle between France and Prussia, which has resulted from them, are facts 
urgent and grave enough to recall the attention of England to her foreign 
policy, and to exert her most energetic efforts. A selfish policy, selfish 
even beyond the requirements of national interest, necessity, and right, is 



46 THE HOME COST OF A " FOBEIGN POLICY." 

that with which England is habitually reproached, and the reproach causes 
her quite as great a loss of influence as it does of moral honor." 

No man in Europe knows better than Guizot the history of England's 
old foreign policy for the last forty or four hundred years. He knows 
well what it has been towards France, from the "Spanish Marriages" back 
through the wars of centuries. He knows, as well as any man in Europe, 
what foreign policies have been to the home policies of all its governments ; 
how their own peoples have been victimized and bled at every vein of 
their manhood by them ; how they have been the everlasting arguments 
and means for suppressing their civil rights; for postponing all improve- 
ment in their political and social condition, and cheating them with the 
sham of military or diplomatic prestige. The English people know well 
what was their civil state when their government was carrying out its for- 
eign policy towards the first French Republic and the Empire that suc- 
ceeded it. All that story lives and burns in unwritten tradition as well as 
written history. And what was the central and sole principle of that for- 
eign policy? Hear Pitt unfold it in Parliament under, as it were, a death- 
bed pressure of honesty: "Unless the monarchy of France is restored, 
the monarchy of England is lost for ever." There was an object to fight 
for, and England fought for it with all the forces she could raise at home 
and hire abroad. To restore the Bourbon race and rule she paid Austria 
£3,200,000 for one campaign. Russia preferred to fight for her by the 
month instead of by the job, and she received of the hard-earned money 
of the English people £112,000 monthly for eight months work in the field- 
That was about the rate of wages she paid fighting Powers for helping her 
to carry out her foreign policy, and to acquire that military prestige which 
so many Americans, as well as Guizot, think she ought to maintain at all 
hazards. The cost of these hireling armies as well as her own raised the 
taxes on her people from £10,000,000 to £30,000,000 a year. This was 
only a small installment of the grand total; merely the little per centage 
which a speculator in real estate pays down in cash to secure a title to a 
large property bought on credit. England's foreign policy towards the 
American colonies and the French republic raised her national debt from 
£88,000,000 to £300,000,000 in a few years. From that sura it went up 
to over £800,000,000, seven-tenths of which, with rivers of English blood, 
were expended on the suppression of the French republic and empire, and 
on the restoration of the Bourbons. 

These are some of the materialistic facts of one campaign of "a vigor- 
ous foreign policy." But it cost something more and dearer than money 
or even blood. It trampled under foot the eager hopes and aspirations of 



THE HOME COST OF A "FOREIGN POLICY." 47 

the English masses for the civil rights and liberties won by the revolutions 
in America and France. It made treason of peaceful efforts to obtain 
them in England. It did worse than this. It demoralized the nation by 
setting on tire all the combustible materials of traditionary hatreds, jeal- 
ousies, and the prejudices of race and religion which the wars of past cen- 
turies had engendered. *If any one desires to see what kind of torch was 
applied to the train of these hateful and explosive sentiments, let him read 
Burke's "Reflections" and some of his speeches. Well, £500,000,000 of 
the English national debt are to-day the unpaid part of the cost of a for- 
eign policy toward France alone. This sum is a great invisible but sen-i- 
ble vampire that spreads itself over every home in the British isles, and, 
like a bat with thirty million mouths, sucks the blood of every industry of 
man and beast in the realm. Before the leaders of this foreign policy 
were in their graves the nation had opened its eyes to the stupendous de- 
lusion. And there is no principle nor motive of intervention in foreign 
contests more utterly hateful to the English people than that carried out 
toward France. And no man knows this better than Guizot. Though 
no other nation, perhaps, is more susceptible of combustion than England 
when her latent prejudices and suspicions are kindled to a blaze by the 
Burkes of her Parliament or of her press, it does not require a new gen- 
eration to see her mistake. In less than ten years after the close of the 
Crimean war the English people began to see and acknowledge that it 
was also a costly and lamentable blunder. 

We come, then, to the question — " What was the foreign policy which 
England ought to have adopted towards France and Germany, at the be- 
ginning or at any other stage of the war between them?" Let us look at 
her ability to maintain that military prestige which so many American 
and European writers seem to think she ought to assert at any cost. Two 
facts will suffice to answer their arguments. England is the only nation 
in Europe that is obliged to hire her soldiers on the American principle. 
Never again can she draft or conscript them for foreign service. Then 
the converse of Lord Stanley's axiom is true. As no continental nation 
or coalition could possibly land in England more than 100,000 men with 
their armaments, so England could not land more than 100,000 men on 
the continent, even if she could raise five times that number by conscrip- 
tion. Now what kind of foreign policy would this military ability have 
enabled her to carry out in regard to the struggle between France and 
Germany? and when should such a policy begin to act? Could England 
have said to the two Powers confronting each other, each with 500,000 « 
men, "There is to be no fighting between you; I will prevent it by force?'' 



43 - A PRELIMINARY CONGRESS. 

If this were the foreign policy demanded of England, then it is quite cleai* 
that she would have had to invade France to prevent France invading 
Germany; that is, to have been the first to begin a war. Certainly no 
intelligent and honest American, Englishman, or Frenchman can say that 
she left any effort untried to prevent the war outside of this act or threat 
of armed intervention. In spite of all these efforts France rushed into 
the war with Germany, and four-fifths of both the American and English 
people looked upon it as an outrage, and hoped that she would get her de- 
serts, or be obliged to suffer what she intended to inflict upon her neigh- 
bor. We will not pretend to inquii'e if she has suffered more than she 
intended to inflict, but ask at what crisis of her discomfiture England 
ought to have stepped in alone with her 100,000 men, or with the threat 
of them, and said to Germany, "It is enough; put up your sword, or I 
will force it into the scabbard." But suppose, as we have done heretofore, 
that this act or threat of armed intervention had arrested Germany at Se- 
dan, what was the ultimatum that England could have imposed upon her, 
and the maximum she could have procured for France, in settling the 
damages of the war? These are some of the questions, as well as the 
costs, involved in that foreign policy which so many American and Euro- 
pean writers and orators would impose upon England as an everlasting 
duty to mankind. 



A Preliminary Congress of Juris-Consuls and Publicists. 

This year must be one of the great years to mankind that determines 
the character of an age. The nations of Christendom have pursued a 
policy which has reached its legitimate issue in this tremendous struggle 
just closed. With this and other results of that policy behind them, they 
will come to a new point of departure at which two roads meet ; one 
leading straight on in the old course, the other diverging to a new direc- 
tion and to another end. The consequences depending on their choice of 
these directions are of immeasurable moment to the world at large as well 
as to themselves. Now, if ever, is the time for the friends of peace every- 
where to concentrate their efforts to give the Great Powers that bias at 
this junction of the two roads that shall incline them into the one that 
leads them from the old highway of barbarism into the tranquil and happy 
realm of a better civilization. 

What, then, can we do, by our organized efforts, aS friends of Peace, to 
realize and hasten this consummation ? Let us remember what we have 



A PRELIMINARY CONGRESS. 



49 



done in past years. Without asking help or counsel of any governments, 
we commenced a series of Peace Congresses on the continent at Brussels 
in 1848 which grew in power, and made a deep impression upon Europe. 
No such public meetings were ever held before in Belgium, France or 
Germany. At each successive congress men of the first eminence, abihty 
and influence took a leading part in the proceedings. Among these were 
Cobden, Cormenin, Bastiat, Victor Hugo, Girardin, Baron Liebig, Surin- 
gar, Vischers, and other able men from most of the countries of Europe. 
There were principles and measures developed and pressed upon the Gov- 
ernments of Christendom which they must adopt if they move one step 
out of the old line of their course toward a condition of organized Peace. 
The congress of 1851, in London, was the most impressive and influential 
public meeting, probably, that any country or age ever saw ; not only for 
the character of the speakers and of their arguments, but for the repre- 
sentative capacity of the assembly itself. 

These congresses organized by the friends of peace, and other enter- 
prises which they have accomplished, may both suggest and answer the 
question ; " What else and more can we do ?" Well, to begin with, we can 
do as much in 1871 as we did in 1851. We can take the field against 
this preposterous fanaticism of the armed peace system, which has just 
blasted the fairest lands of Europe, wielding new experiences, that shall 
plead, "like angels trumpet-tongued," against the stupendous folly. We 
can bring on in public assembly a discussion of that folly in sight of 
that great back-ground of woe, in the hearing of the wail of a million of 
widows and orphans weeping over the desolation of their hearts and 
homes, in France and Germany. We can convene a congress of the first 
and ablest jurists in Christendom. That is what we can do this very year 
in London or Amsterdam. We have connections enough, influence enough, 
and money enough, to do this thing — to convene the most august and 
influential assembly that ever met on earth to promote the peace and well- 
being of nations. There is no great writer or expounder of international 
law in Europe or America whom we cannot bring to such a congress, and 
who would not feel honored by being brought to take part in its delibera- 
tions and conclusions. If need be, and if they will accept it, we can 
defray all their expenses to and from, and during the congress. We can 
procure a hall in London, the Hague or Amsterdam worthy of such an 
assembly and its object. Their own character and standing, aside from 
this object, will command the profound respect and princely hospitalities 
and courtesies of the authorities and people of the capital chosen for their 
deliberations. We can send from America our first writers on Interna- 



gQ A PRELIMINARY CONGRESS. 

tional Law, such as President Wolsey, of Yale University, Bemis of Bos- 
ton, David Dudley Field, of New York, our Charles Sumner, Seward 
and other experienced statesmen whose reputations are known in Europe. 
And what a delegation to the congress the friends of peace might enlist 
and send from England ! What professor of International Law at Oxford 
or Cambridge, or writer or s[;eaker on the jurisprudence recognized or 
required by the family of nations, would not feel it to be the most digni- 
fied and pleasant mission he ever filled, to meet in such a congress the 
most distinguished authors, statesmen and savans in Christendom ? We 
have done twenty yeai's ago a work of greater labor and difficulty than 
would be involved in the convocation of such an Ecumenical Council to 
establish among the nations the infallibility of truth and justice as the 
basis of their political creed and practice. 

I feel confident that none of the friends of peace who remember what 
we have accomplished in past years will doubt our ability to convene such 
a Congress of Jurists and Publicists. Let us assume that we all believe 
that we can do this, and do it this very year. Well, what should we pro- 
pose such a congress should put its hand to fii'st? What is the first prac- 
tical object it could and would accomplish ? If it did not say a word, nor 
discuss a principle in secret session, the very meeting and mutual presence 
of such men under one roof would be a happy and influential event, and 
the first one of the kind the world ever witnessed. So far as we know, 
never did two great writers on International Law meet and sit down 
together to consult and compare notes, before they put forth those essays 
that contain all the authority the world has on the important subject. 
Grotius, Vattel, Puffendorf, Wheaton, Stowell, Kent, and Story were iso- 
lated writers, each issuing his views from his own private study. And 
yet how the great nations have referred and deferred to these individual, 
isolated authorities ! Well, this is the first achievement we shall accom- 
plish ; we shall assemble in a congress all the living Vattels, Puffendorfs, 
Stowells, Wheatons, Kents, and Storys of Christendom. They will bring 
with them and unfold to each other all the erudition the past can supply 
and all they have added to the stock from their own researches. Out of 
these rich resources they will elaborate an International Code which all 
nations must accept as the highest legal authority that could be established 
by human learning and effort. This code will supply, as it were, the 
organic law for the action of any future Congress of Nations convened to 
settle some dispute or difficulty between them. Such a body can and will 
review, and pronounce a verdict upon, the opinions,. principles and prece- 
dents on which the great Powers have acted in extreme cases and doubt- 



A PRELIMINARY CONGRESS. 51 

ful transactions ; so that forevermore none of them may plead differing or 
uncertain authorities for illegal and iniquitous proceedings. 

This, then, is a work quite within the ability of the friends of peace in 
Europe and America this very year. It is a practical work in which all 
their young societies in France, Germany, and Holland would gladly and 
efficiently co-operate with us. It is an enterprise that would strengthen 
and unite us all round ; that would raise our objects and efforts to a new 
and higher level before the Governments of Christendom ; that would 
pave the way for that periodical Congress and permanent High Court of 
Nations which we all, as well as the French poet, have hoped, labored and 
prayed for: "The Federation of the "World, the Parliament of Man." 



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